BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Versione Completa   Stampa   Cerca   Utenti   Iscriviti     Condividi : FacebookTwitter
Benedetto XVI Forum » Benedetto XVI Forum » English Section » Mainly about BENEDICT XVI, plus relevant items on the Church & the Vatican
Pagine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ..., 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, [365], 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, ..., 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 11 settembre 2016 23:42




ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



For obvious reasons, I have re-posted here the last item on the preceding page...








'One sees he has lived his life'
Interview with Peter Seewald
on LETZTE GESPRAECHE with Benedict XVI
by Patrik Schwarz
Translated from
CHRIST&WELT
Weekly Supplement to
DIE ZEIT
September 7, 2016

Editor's Note: This week, the new interview book with Benedict XVI was published, in which he speaks about his life after retirement.
Here is a conversation with his interviewer Peter Seewald, author and journalist...



Peter Seewald, since 1996, three book-length interviews of yours with Joseph Ratzinger had been published, first when he was cardinal and then as Pope. Now you are presenting the Final Conversations with the first emeritus pope in modern times. Was it different this time?
First, it is a world premiere - the first time in history that a pope evaluates his own time in office. On the other hand, there is here an impartiality and unprecedented openness. These conversations were originally not conducted with the thought of being published as such, but they were to be material for a Ratzinger biography on which I am working. That in itself perhaps makes it something different.

What does this book consist of?[
A small part of it comes from when he was still pope, but the greater part was done after his retirement. Thus, the sessions cover a relatively long period.

How did you find Benedict XVI the first time you met with him after his retirement?
He had become frailer and appeared dreadfully exhausted. It was immediately understandable what he said in announcing his renunciation - that he no longer had the strength to carry out the tasks that the Papacy calls for. At the same time, one noted a great relaxation, like someone in an ocean of calm. And one also immediately sensds the humility and simplicity that had always marked him from when he was a student through his entire career.

From the Apostolic Palace to a retirement home: what’s it like for an emeritus pope?
The so-called monastery in the Vatican Gardens is a very simple residence. For the pope as well as for the lay sisters who take care of him, and for Archbishop Gaenswein…

So, a community of seniors rather than a residence for seniors?
Well, the only senior among them is Benedict. Georg Gaenswein is 60, and for a bishop, he is in his prime. In any case, it’s usually Sister Camilla [the interviewer may have misheard - I think the right name is Carmela] who opens the door, usually wearing an apron. Then one takes a small elevator to an upper story [the second floor where the Pope’s living quarters are], where Benedict now uses a Rollator to move about.

What is the atmosphere like during your conversations?
Joseph Ratzinger is very structured, so it always starts out the same way. He asks me how I am, I ask him how he is, and he answers, “Just as it would be for an old man”. And then, we proceed to the interview.

No chatting first, no invitation to lunch afterwards?
No, we have always had to do [these interviews] within a limited time frame. Sometimes, I would ask the nuns, “Could you bring him some water, at least?” But he does not take the time for that, not even coffee.

No worldly pleasures?
My impression is that he really lives today very much in praying and for praying. But one ‘must’ for him is the nightly primetime Italian newscast. His brother once observed that Joseph Ratzinger is a news junkie.

And what about those TV specials that Italian TV invariably has?
When you ask him what TV show he likes best, his answer often is: “Don Camillo and Peppone” [films based on Guareschi’s novels about a smalltown Italian parish priest in postwar Italy and his work in a town which has a Communist mayor]. He goes to bed early.

Meanwhile, it has been more than three years since his retirement. How is he these days?
He himself thought that he would not live much longer after his renunciation. But he is someone who bounces back. At one point, one thinks, “This is going to be the last visit with him”. Then, with the next visit, he seems to have gained new strength, and he says, in the Bavarian dialect, “Now I seem to have recouped”.

How does he cope?
Recently, I said to him, Next year you will turn 90. Surely you will celebrate that. And he said, “Oh, I hope not!”

Is he wrapping it up?
One would say he has lived his life. I won’t say that he is tired of life, but that he has simply given his all. And one sees he has this yearning to leave for that new world that he has so often anticipated in his thoughts, to be closer to his Jesus. He sees his monastic life further reduced, less correspondence, less visitors, less attention.

But is that not contradicted by this book? To express himself on his retirement, his pontificate, on Francis – this, too, is a political act. Obviously, Benedict had a purpose for this. Why is he speaking now?
Of course, he may now be reproved that he has broken his silence, that he wishes to be in the public eye again, or to wield influence. But Pope Benedict is not a shadow Pope. He has stepped down and has not involved himself. Part of the history of this book is that there should not be such a book at all. My interview partner was against it at first.

Against the conversations or against the publication?
Against the publication. And even I did not start out thinking that such a book would be published while he is still alive. The interviews, as I said, were intended as material for the biography I am writing.

So what happened?
It became clear to me as I was transcribing the interview tapes that this was not mere commentary, nor supplementary, to his curriculum vitae, but that it was a historical document. Here, once again, we hear Joseph Ratzinger pure, without media distortions – even and especially about his resignation. That had been truly an unmatchable act about which all he said were the 20 lines in Latin he read in his announcement. About which legends and conspiracy theories have been woven – that he had not resigned of his own free will but that he was compelled to do so by scandals or blackmail. This required authentic information from the historical person himself in order to put a stop to all this nonsense. That is what I sought to convince the emeritus pope.

How do you convince a Pope?
You can only convince someone like Joseph Ratzinger with good arguments.

What were your arguments?
In the more than three years since his retirement, a reading has crept in that makes me downright angry: That Joseph Ratzinger had been the wrong choice for Pope, and that the best thing about his pontificate was his resignation. What nonsense!

It belies the greatness of his theological work, his great contribution to the Second Vatican Council and to the Pontificate of John Paul II, as well as the meaning of his own Pontificate, during which he started a lot of the things that Pope Francis is now continuing.

And so it is important that he should, once more, take a personal stand. Ultimately, this constitutes an open access to the message and inspiration of Benedict XVI. I think this has existential significance for the future of the faith, the Church and society.

A condition for its publication was that it should have the approval of Pope Francis. Which he gave without ifs or buts.

[I had wondered before whether the books JR wrote while he was Prefect of the CDF required the formal imprimatur ['Let it be printed' permission] of John Paul II as his superior. Notwithstanding the condition-request the cardinal had made to the pope before finally accepting to come to Rome to head the CDF, namely, that he would be able to continue publishing books in his personal capacity as a theologian.

Normally, a theologian would submit any work to his diocesan censor who would screen it for any errors of doctrine and would then issue his 'nihil obstat' (Nothing stands in the way) for the book's publication, upon which the bishop would issue his 'Imprimatur'. For theologian-CDF Prefect Ratzinger, the censor would have been his own office. Not that he would or could ever have written anything questionable or contrary to the Catholic faith.

Presumably JMB's imprimatur was formally requested for this book. If this was requested after it had been written, it would have meant that a copy of the manuscript was passed on to be vetted by those who do this for the pope. If only for this reason, it could not have included anything remotely negative about the Pope.

But I have now concluded, to my infinite regret, after reading what Seewald says in this interview, that Benedict XVI himself willingly and knowingly said all the things he says about Francis in this book After his insistence on keeping Cardinal Bertone on as his Secretary of State - a relatively trivial thing compared to this - I disagree 100 percent with Benedict XVI for the first time. Not about his opinions of JMB as a person, because those are his opinions, even if they happen to be the complete opposite of my own opinions.

I question whether it was at all necessary to say the things he is quoted to have said about his successor in the way he is quoted to have said them. Which does imply blanket approval for everything JMB has said and done, even if much of it goes against what Joseph Ratzinger had been preaching and writing in the first 86 years of his life. How is it possible that this implication has escaped him and those around him?]

How do you deal with a pope – by telephone?
No, during all the years we have worked together, we communicate by letters.

So you go to your postbox in the morning, and there you find a letter from the Pope…
In essence, yes. Mostly, it comes in a large envelope, in which Sr. Birgit, his closest co-worker, encloses the letter, often protected by so much cardboard, so that it arrives in good condition.

Was there a lot of correspondence to and fro until he was convinced?
It didn’t need an extended exchange of letters, but he certainly thought about it a lot, and must have prayed about it. Of course, he knows that this decision would set off new criticism of him. Even if this would come primarily from those who, in any case, have always been against him. [Not so. Some of the 'traditionalist' commentators who used to be behind him have now lumped him as just one more lackey of the 'FrancisChurch' they denounce and decry daily.]

Benedict XVI says in the book that he had not expected the election of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope, that he sat in suspense before the TV, like the rest of the world...
Yes, and it seems that even before the new pope stepped into the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square, he had placed a call to Benedict who was in Castel Gandolfo, along with his Memores Domini, sitting in front of the TV waiting to see the first appearance of his successor – so no one heard the phone ringing. [It appears they finally connected after the loggia appearance.]

There has always been speculation about the relationship between the two. Francis seems keen to have a good relationship with his predecessor, and it appears that Benedict, in this book, seeks to give the impression that he and Francis are on the same wavelength. Is there real harmony or is this for show?
No, it is not a show. First, the pope is the pope. That is true for every Catholic and even more so for someone who was pope. There has not been a situation like this before.. Everything that they do together is a ‘first’, for which the appropriate form must be found. Even for seeming banalities: How should one address a former pope? What should he wear? How should the reigning pope and the former pope get along? For all of which, there is no tradition that would set the rules. Both of them are virtually creating the papacy in this century. It is reasonable to imagine that there could at some time be three living popes – one reigning and two emeriti. And Frrancis has said that he too can imagine retiring if and when he feels he can no longer carry out his task. [Well, he has since thought that over and has now said more than once that under no condition would he ever think of resigning.]

That’s on the political level. What’s it like on the personal level between the two?
I think there is a good personal closeness between them. In the book, when I ask Benedict if he has any problem with the style of his successor, he says, “No. On the contrary, I find it good”. [Seewald uses the German word 'Art' which, in this context, can mean style or way of doing things; otherwise, generically, it can just mean 'sort' or 'type'.]

In turn, Francis has called his predecessor a great Teacher of the Church, whose spirit “will emerge greater and more powerful with each succeeding generation”. And he has said that he will try with the help of God “to continue in the same direction as Benedict”.

They not only see each other more frequently, they write letters to each other and exchange views. [And would the views on the part of Benedict express his honest views including anything negative? Schwarz should have followed up this statement by Seewald.]

Benedict speaks openly about the difference in temperament between them. I can also imagine that he must raise his eyebrows at many of the things Francis does. But he likes the elan that Francis brings to his job. One sees the difference in their public appearances. Benedict’s presence is one for the concert hall, Francis is the man for the public square.

There are always reports about intrigues in which the adversaries of Francis wish to implicate his predecessor…
But anyone who tries that will simply be banging their head against a brick wall with Benedict.

So there are no discreet hints, no encouraging nods for the critics of Francis?
No. I am sure that not once, not even to Georg Gaenswein, his secretary, has he ever allowed any word of disloyalty to cross his lips.

In editing the book, was anything stricken out?
No, nothing important was left out. But it is true that we spoke about other things for the biography that are not contained in this book because they would be out of place.

At the end of the interview, Benedict refers to a love in his youth.
Yes, he fell in love when he was a student, and it was quite serious.

What do you mean, serious?
That it caused him serious concern. During his first years in university after the war, there were female students, and he had become a very charming man, a good-looking young man, a beautiful soul who wrote poems and read Herman Hesse. One of his fellow students at the time told me that he had quite an effect on women, which he reciprocated. And so, it was not easy for him to decide in favor of the celibate life.

The book is called 'Last Conversations' – it could also be titled 'The Last Judgment'. One notes how Benedict struggled with what he openly calls his inadequacies. Right from the start, he refers to himself as “this poor little man”…
Ratzinger is anything but someone full of himself. That didn’t change when he was Pope, and it is even clearer in this retrospective of his life.

He says that ‘knowing’ others is not among his strengths, and that ‘practical governance is not at all my thing”.
Self-criticism is part of his self-knowledge, and that is overlooked by many critics. He has never shown himself to be authoritarian.

And that is not just coquetry?
No, I have never felt that about him. I believe that in the final stage of his life, he is truly very clear about himself. He admits openly in what ways he felt that he has been inadequate. He says, for example, that he has not always treated everyone with the attention they may have deserved. And he speaks quite frankly about his other weaknesses or about his physical handicaps…

As in ‘my voice is by nature weak’?
Even more serious is the limitation that was not known to me despite the many conversations we had over so many years: that before he was elected pope, he was already fully blind in the left eye, after a brain hemorrhage and inflammation.

The insight into the papacy that Benedict gives us is very surprising. He says the pope is no superman, that he cannot just change things with words of authority. Is the pope less powerful than the world thinks?
The word ‘infallibility’ has led to many false conclusions. Those who know very little about the Catholic Church think wrongly that everything a pope does is infalible, and that therefore Catholics must be submissive. But there are many things a pope cannot change. Benedict has a very realistic picture of the possibilities as well as the limitations of the office. The pope is not the king. Christ is the King of the Church.

In the book, one experiences in many places a touching personality who asks himself the final questions. Despite this, however, one must ask about the political objective of this book: Is this not also an attempt to protect his legacy, to polish, in retrospect, a pontificate that was shabby?
No, he does not see his pontificate as having been a failure. Of course, it had its problems, even some scandals, from which no papacy has been free, not even that of Francis. Benedict’s central declaration in announcing his renunciation of the Papacy was this: “I can leave now, when I am not under any pressure”. As weakened as he was, physically and pscychically, as he described it himself, but he was not under any political pressure – because, he has always said, one must not yield to external pressure.

But despite all that, he is really concerned with what his image will be in the history books…
Even a Joseph Ratzinger is not completely devoid of vanity. But for him, this is limited to wanting to be considered at the level of theological discussion in his time. He is not vain in the sense of wanting to be great in the eyes of others, or to go into the history books, or even to be judged a great pope. When anyone tells him that, he cringes.

What is important to him is that access to his work should not be blocked. And his work is not the announcement of Joseph Ratzinger but the announcement of Christ. And therefore, he perhaps feared that unless he gave his final words about his resignation, a shadow would remain to darken his work on Christ.

After so many books, so many conversations with Joseph Ratzinger, what is the strongest image that remains with you?
Perhaps his last evening as Pope. After the white helicopter had flown him, to the sound of pealing church bells, from the Vatican Gardens to Castel Gandolfo in the Alban Hills, he stood for the last time at the window of the residence, waved to the faithful and said, I think, “Good night”. Then he turned and disappeared from the balcony into the darkness of the house. I asked him what he did then, inside the residence, behind the shutters, on that historic night.

And?
Very laconically, he said – and this is not in the book – “I unpacked my bags”. He may well be a great spirit, he may have all these spiritual concerns, but there is something he likes to do, day or night: Now and then, he loves to dawdle.

[Not quite the note on which to end a conversation about Benedict XVI by his biographer! Perhaps a humanizing anecdote but also trivializing...]

The most objective account - because it doesn't conclude that Benedict XVI approves the Bergoglian pontificate 100 percent - that I have read so far about the book is, surprisingly, from THE DAILY BEAST, by its Rome correspondent...

Pope Benedict’s new 'autobiography':
'I was unsure about Francis
by Barbie Latza Nadeau
THE DAILY BEAST

ROME, Sept. 9, 2016 — Pope Benedict XVI has given his final word. His autobiography, Benedict XVI: Final Conversations, published Sept. 9 in Italian and German, is the fruit of a series of long interviews by German journalist and papal confidante Peter Seewald. The English version will be released in late November under the title Last Testaments.

The cover shows the back of Benedict’s skullcapped head in a fog of incense over a red box, about the same color as his famous Prada shoes, with the words “spiritual testament” and a quote by Pope Francis about how his predecessor “embodies holiness, is a man of a man of God.”

In essence, it is a living obituary for a man who Seewald says is in the waning moments of his long life of 89 years. He is now blind in his left eye and cannot walk unassisted. When Seewald asked if he hoped to see his 90th birthday, Benedict responded, “hopefully not.”

Seewald uses Benedict’s own words intertwined with anecdotes of the long hours they spent together to paint a revealing portrait of a man who can be easily described as misunderstood.

Seewald says that on several occasions he thought Benedict was so weak that he wouldn’t live to see their next meeting. “You realize he has lived his life,” Seewald told Die Zeit when the book came out. “I don’t want to say he is tired of life, but that he has simply given all he’s got to give.”

Benedict was the first pope to resign from office in modern history, setting a precedent that many feel Pope Francis may follow when and if he tires of his fast-paced pontificate.

He describes himself as a “news junkie” and how he was “glued to the television to see who won” as his successor when the black smoke turned to white during the conclave. In his excitement, he ignored a call from Jose Mario Bergoglio, who he knew as a prominent member of the Argentine church. He was shocked when they called Bergolgio’s name to become the next pope.

“No one expected him,” Benedict says. “When I first heard his name, I was unsure. But when I saw how he spoke with God and with people, I truly was content. And happy.”

“What did touch me, though, was that even before going out onto the loggia, he tried to phone me.”

Benedict is also very honest about his shortcomings and frustrations as pontiff. He talks candidly about his battle against a “powerful gay lobby” of a handful of people who tried to influence decisions in the church.

“We dissolved it,” he says matter-of-factly, though Francis has admitted such a group still exists within the hierarchy of the Holy See.

Benedict also admits where he thinks he could have done better. “My weak point perhaps is a lack of resolve in governing and making decisions,” he says about the indecision on many issues that has come to define his papacy. [I have to see what the book actually says about that. Can you think of a major indecision? Deciding to keep Bertone was not an indecision, even if, in the opinion of many, it was a wrong decision.]

“Here, in reality, I am more a professor, one who reflects and meditates on spiritual questions. Practical governance was not my forte, and this certainly was a weakness.”

“But I don’t see myself as a failure,” he says. “For eight years, I did my service.”

He has also grown to appreciate Pope Francis, whose papacy has already overshadowed Benedict’s in the three years since he was elected. “He is a man of practical reform and he also has the spirit to intervene and take measures of an organizational nature,” Benedict says of the new pope.

In the years after Benedict resigned, conspiracy theorists have suggested the German pontiff had been blackmailed or somehow pressured to leave his office. His retirement came after his butler was convicted of passing on his private documents to a journalist and after he was presented with a mysterious red binder that reportedly outlined the many problems facing the church. But Benedict says he wasn’t pushed out.

“It was not a retirement made under the pressure of events or a flight made due to the incapacity to face them,” he says. “No one tried to blackmail me. I would not have allowed it. If they had tried, I would not have gone because it is not right to leave when under pressure. And it is not true that I was disappointed, or anything like that.”

In interviews to promote the book, Seewald has also been giving out tidbits that didn’t make the tome’s final cut, including how Joseph Ratzinger, as he was known before he became pope, fell in love with a woman just as he was about to take his priestly vows.

“There was an infatuation during his course of studies that was very serious,” Seewald told Die Zeit. “One of his fellow students told me he had quite an effect on women — and the other way around. The decision for celibacy wasn’t easy for him.”

One of the greatest disappointments the book reveals is that Benedict’s juicer memoir will be kept private. He kept extensive diaries throughout the time he was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and throughout his papacy, including the butler scandal and his decision to retire. Seewald says those notes will be destroyed when he dies.

Now that Benedict’s self-reflection has been published, Seewald says the former pope is ready to die, spending his days not dreading his death, but instead “preparing to pass the ultimate examination before God.”


P.S. kath.net has published Seewald's full Foreword to Letzte Gespraeche but I have to translate it first... It's a powerful and beautiful summation of Joseph Ratzinger's life and worth as a person, as a man of God, and as the humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord. I did not stop tearing as I skimmed through it the first time - rereading it is even more poignant...
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 11 settembre 2016 23:47


Not surprisingly, Antonio Socci's initial 'reading' of the B16-Seewald interview book has to do with reinforcing his hypothesis that Benedict XVI continues to be the only legitimate pope because his resignation was technically invalid, and that Bergoglio's election as pope was similarly rendered invalid by technical infractions of Conclave rules. Still, it is interesting to read what he says.

Is Benedict XVI 'the last pope'?
'Anything is possible', he says,
Or what is not being reported about the new interview book
Translated from

September 10, 2016

But who is really the Pope today? And how many popes are there? Confusion continues to reign, and Benedict XVI's latest intervention - the book length interview Ultime conversazioni multiplies the doubts instead of dissolving them.

I will start from the most curious detail. Peter Seewald asks Benedict XVI: "You are familiar with the prophecy of Malachi, who in the Middle Ages, compiled a list of future Pontiffs and predicted the end of the world, or at least the end of the Church. According to his list, the Papacy would have ended with yours. And if you should perhaps be the last one to represent the figure of the pope as we had always known it...?"

Ratzinger's answer is surprising: "Everything is possible", to which he adds, "Probably this prophecy was born in the circles around St. Phillip Neri". That is, he calls it a 'prophecy' and traces it back to a great saint and mystic [and Doctor] of the Church". He ends with a light-hearted remark. But that was his answer.

Therefore, is Benedict XVI saying he was the last pope (before the end of the world or the end of the Church)? Probably not. Then, was he saying that he was the last to exercise the Papacy as we had known it for 2000 years? Perhaps yes.

But even this last supposition is startling, because the papacy - a divine institution - cannot be changed by human will. Moreover, what change in the Papacy? Has there been a rupture in the uninterrupted tradition of the Church?

Another 'flash' from the book leads in this direction. Seewald asks: "Do you see yourself as the last pope of the old world, or as the first of the new one?" Answer: "I would say both".

What did he mean? What do 'old' and 'new' mean, especially for someone like Benedict XVI who had always fought the interpretation of Vatican II as a rupture with Tradition, and had always affirmed the necessary continuity, without caesura, of the history of the Church?

On Page 31 of the Italian edition (the text had been reviewed and approved by Benedict XVI), Seewald affirms that Ratzinger had performed 'a revolutionary act (that) has changed the papacy as no other pope has done in modern times".

Is this hypothesis - which evidently refers to the 'institution' of an emeritus pope - linked to the other things Ratzinger says in this book? Yes, On page 39.

Before summarizing what Pope Benedict says here, I must point out that the figure of a 'pope emeritus' has never existed in the history of the Church, and canonists have always insisted that there cannot be one, because the 'papacy' is not a sacrament, as is the ordination of a bishop. Indeed, in 2000 years, all those who gave up the papacy all returned to what they were before they became pope. Whereas bishops remain bishops even when they no longer head a diocese. [But a pope is first of all, Bishop of Rome - he is pope because he is Bishop of Rome - so in that sense, he is legitimately and canonically 'emeritus'!]

Nevertheless, Benedict XVI, in the final days of his Pontificate, went against everything that canonists had always maintained and announced that he would be the 'emeritus pope'.

He did not spell out the theological basis for this, but in his last address, he said: "My decision to renounce active exercise of the [Petrine] ministry does not revoke this".*

Benedict accompanied his words with the decision to stay in the Vatican [i.e., live out his retirement there instead of somewhere else], continue to wear a white cassock and zucchetto, keep his papal seal that includes the keys of Peter [I am not aware that he continues to use this - his] stationary only contains his name BENEDETTO XVI - obviously without the PP that came after it when he was pope], and to be called "His Holiness, Benedict XVI".

Enough to ask what was really happening and whether he had really resigned from the papacy. And it is what I have been doing in these columns, especially since, in the meantime, canonist Stefano Violi, who studied Benedict's statement of renunciation, came to these conclusions:
Benedict XVI declares he renounces the ministry. Not the Papacy, according to the norm set by Boniface VIII. Not the munus Petrinus according to Canon 332, S2, but the ministerium, or as he would specify in his last General Audience, "the active exercise of the ministry'.

As a consequence of my initial articles on this issue, Vaticanista Andrea Tornielli, who is very close to the reigning pope, wrote Benedict XVI to ask why he calls himself the emeritus pope, and he got this answer: "Wearing the white cassock and retaining the papal name were simply practical things. I had no other cassocks at my disposal when I resigned".

Tornielli trumpeted his 'scoop' to the world, although to any serious observer, that reply was obviously a humorous [I would say 'sarcastic'] riposte (C'mon, there were no black cassocks available in the Vatican???) in order to avoid answering a question that Benedict XVI, at that time, evidently could not discuss.

But now, after three years, he does, expressing the reasons for what he decided, which obviously did not include sartorial reasons!

So in this new book, Papa Ratzinger addresses the issue by reflecting on bishops. When it was decided that bishops should retire at 75, the figure of the 'emeritus bishop' was instituted because, for a bishop, "I am a father figure and I will remain so for always".

Benedict XVI then observes that even when "a father stops acting like a father" because his children have grown up, "he does not stop being a father, although he leaves behind the concrete responsibilities of a father. He continues being a father in a more profound and intimate way".

Analogously, Papa Ratzinger applies the same reasoning to the 'Papa' (the Italian word for father was adapted for the Pope): "If he resigns, he maintains his responsibility in an internal sense, not in function".

But this reasoning, poetic as it may be, is explosive theologically because it means he is still Pope. [I get your point, Socci, but if he does not carry out the function of pope, which is all that matters in the practical and juridical senses, he is not 'still Pope'. He is an ex-pope who thinks and feels within himself that he continues to have an internal but abstract responsibility to the office he once had.]

In order to understand the theological framework that is behind Ratzinger's revolutionary act, one must read the sensational text of the address given by his secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, on May 21 at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

In that address - which was effectively 'blocked' in the Italian media, but which had the effect of an atom bomb in the Curia - don Georg said that "After February 11, 2013, the papal ministry is no longer what it was before. It is and remains a foundation of the Catholic Church. But it is a foundation that Benedict XVI has profoundly and lastingly transformed in his exceptional pontificate".

He took a "well-considered step of millenary historical importance... a step that had never before been taken". Because, he continued, Benedict XVI "did not abandon the office of Peter... He has renewed it".

Indeed, "he has integrated the personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, almost a ministry held in common... (and) understands his task as being a participation in such a Petrine ministry. There are not two popes, but a de facto enlarged ministry - with an active member and a contemplative member".

Until that May 21 address, Bergoglio - who must have heard these things from Benedict XVI himself (without understanding him) - had been explaining the institution of the 'emeritus pope' along the same lines. He said that Benedict XVI's resignation as wan 'act of governance', that he had only renounced his active ministry, and he made the analogy to emeritus bishops.

But after Gaenswein's address, the potential import of the problem was quickly understood in Bergoglio's papal court, setting off alarms. And so in early June, returning from Armenia, Bergoglio flatly rejected the idea of a 'shared' papal ministry.

Then in August, VATICAN INSIDER (a thermometer of the Bergoglian Curia) published an interview by Tornielli with an important canonist-ecclesiastic in the Curia, who delegitimized completely the concept of an 'emeritus pope' because "the uniqueness of the Petrine succession does not admit any distinction or duplication of the office nor of a nomenclature that is merely honorific or nominal". Moreover, "there is no distinction made between the munus Petrinus and its exercise".

But Benedict XVI, when he still had full powers as pope, decided he would remain pope [That is, of course, Socci's interpretation but nothing Benedict XVI has said and done after February 28, 2013, substantiates the claim 'He decided he would remain Pope'] and renounce only the active exercise of the Petrine ministry.

If that decision of his is inadmissible and invalid, does that mean that even his resignation is invalid?

[Apples and oranges! What is inadmissible and invalid?:
- that he continues to be called Benedict XVI (popes continue to be referred to by their papal names after they die);
- that he continues to wear a white cassock and the white zucchetto (Why not? I personally think it is important to remind the world that he was once the Pope and that the dignity of the institution must be preserved. He does not wear the cassock with a mozzetta nor with a sash, as only the reigning pope can do);
- that he continues to be called 'His Holiness' (would he be any less 'His Holiness' than the many 'Holinesses' in the Eastern Churches?)

All the above is quibbling over non-essentials. Even if he thought he was 'still the Pope' - which obviously he does not, or he wouldn't go through all these [frankly unnecessary, and for us who love him, extremely hurtful] efforts to prove he is 'loyal and obedient' to the reigning pope - nobody else thinks that, not even, I believe, Georg Gaenswein himself. Peter Seewald does not say that at all.

Besides, when he decided, while he was still Pope, these now- controversial details about his post-papacy life, Benedict XVI - as far as I know - did not formalize these in any decree that would set a precedent or a norm for other emeritus popes who may come after him. He prescribed them for himself and has not bound anybody else to follow him. Future emeritus popes will have their own ideas of how to be 'emeritus'.

As for the validity of his resignation, and of the subsequent election of Bergoglio, those are moot and academic issues which do not affect reality in any way. Whether you like it or not (and every Catholic is perfectly free to ignore anything JMB says or does which is against the faith transmitted to us before this pontificate), Bergoglio is now the pope, and Benedict XVI is an ex-pope.

*I have now checked back the full quotation that Socci alludes to, from Benedict's last General Audience on February 27, 2013:
...Allow me to go back once again to 19 April 2005. The real gravity of the decision was also due to the fact that from that moment on I was engaged always and forever by the Lord.

Always – anyone who accepts the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and completely to everyone, to the whole Church. In a manner of speaking, the private dimension of his life is completely eliminated... because he no longer belongs to himself, he belongs to all and all belong to him.

The "always" is also a "for ever" – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this. [Socci finds the terminology specifically suggestive that Benedict meant he was not really resigning as pope - but everything else that he says makes it clear he thinks of his service in retirement as a service of prayer, which is, of course, a ministry in itself, but a voluntary self-imposed ministry, not a formal ministry.]

I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences, and so on. I am not abandoning the cross, but remaining in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord.

I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter. Saint Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way for a life which, whether active or passive, is completely given over to the work of God.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 12 settembre 2016 02:39


Happily, I have now seen two book reviews from Italian journalists who do not focus on what Benedict XVI thinks about Jorge Bergoglio (a topic that, for now, repels me)....

Benedict XVI, the orthodox rebel:
The fascinating journey of an uneasy innovator
A review of 'Ultime Conversazioni'
by Ubaldo Casotto
Translated from

September 10, 2016

He is a rebel. In his most profound being, Joseph Ratzinger is a rebel and an innovator. The Bavarian pope of the gentle features, reserved manners and submissive tone. The German theologian who quickly became enamoured of living in Rome - who quickly appreciated and adopted the practice of the pennichella (the Roman afternoon siesta). The 'completely normal average Christian' who imbibed his firm faith from his Bavarian family since infancy, who has never worked late at night, using it for what God intended - for sleeping, even the night before the inaugural Mass of his Petrine ministry, or the night before he announced his renunciation. [Casotto forgets, however, that he did work late at night after his election as pope - after the celebratory dinner with the other cardinals at Casa Santa Marta, he had to write his homily for his first Mass as Pope in the Sistine Chapel early the following morning, and he wrote it in Latin. In comparison, BTW, JMB's first Mass as Pope was held the afternoon after his election.]

This man is someone whose instincts go against the current.

Benedict XVI - contrary to the public reflection of his image, of the picture constructed of him by the media and his many detractors who have confused his personal identity with his official functions (guardian of the doctrine of the faith, defender of orthodoxy, the pope's watchdog), and despite his cultured and refined ways - is not, in his heart of hearts, just a docile person.

But it could not be otherwise for someone who has sought to look at the origins of our faith with the eyes of reason - the declared purpose of his vocation and his mission: "Faith and reason are the values in which I recognized my mission", he says on Page 22 of this book. It has been a journey upriver, against the current.

That much I have gathered from my overnight reading of his interview book with Peter Seewald, Ultime conversazioni. Not because of my own intuition, but from his own words: "There is in me a desire to contradict" (p. 63), so much that he came to use 'insolent tones' in the pre-Vatican II meetings he took part in (p. 129).

In this perspective, one better understands his love for St. Augustine and his concept of life as a struggle for the truth of the faith "even after his conversion - and this makes his experience so beautiful and dramatic" (p. 84).

He does not hide his self-confessed timidity and his ungenerous definition of himself as 'a man without charisma' (p. 174). Joseph Ratzinger's fascinating orthodoxy comes from his perennial disquiet [Augustine called it 'restlessness'], that of a love that is never satiated by the perennial newness of the truth.

"I did not want to move among those with a stale philosophy - readymade and labelled - but to understand philosophy as a question - Who are we, really? - and above all, to get to know modern philosophy. In this sense, I was modern and critical" (p. 81), and that is why he appreciated Theodor Steinbuechel [German philosopher who wrote, among other things, a two-volume book entitled The philosophical foundations of Catholic ethics in 1938]. "We were progressivists who wished to renew theology, and the Church herself, to make her more vibrant" (p. 83).

The first theologian who fascinated him was one of his university professors, Gottlieb Söhngen. above all because "he confronted problems... he was not satisfied with self-sufficient academic abstractions, but always asked, 'But how are things as they really are?'" (p. 86).

And how things really are, he learned from, among others, Herman Hesse, whose ruthless analysis of the disaggregation of personality (the 'I') in his novel Steppenwolf [which became a book cult among the first hippies in the 1960s] "reflects what is happening to man today" (p. 101).

Thus, a rebellious spirit who never showed open signs of rebellion - of whom we might say that his progressivist reformism was out of obedience - but who never showed any supine acceptance of anything contrary to his clear idea of why he is in this world.

Speaking of the 'drama' of his life, he turns it into questions: "I asked myself: Should I become a priest or not?... Why am I here? What is happening to me? Who am I?" (p. 83).

Questions to which he would find answers with certainty: "I knew that God wanted something from me, that he expected something from me, and I came to understand gradually, with increasing certainty, that this something had to do with the priesthood" (p. 90).

It was this awareness - along with "humiliations that are necessary" - which allowed him to resist (up to a certain point) his superiors, starting with an Archbishop of Munich and even John Paul II.

His conflict with Cardinal Wendel (Archbishop of Munich, 1952-1960) - Benedict XVI refers to a 'complicated correspondence' - was over the cardinal's refusal to allow him to teach in the state university as he had been invited to do.

"Did you oppose your bishop's orders?" Seewald asks him. He answers, "No, but I simply did not agree to his initial wish" which was to send him to teach in a school of pedagogy. "That was not my charism" (p. 99).

Everyone knows his initial refusals to John Paul II who wanted him in Rome after he became pope, as well as his obedience to the pope's rejection of his requests to retire from the CDF. The third time he requested this, the pope said to him: "It is not necessary to write me a letter nor that you tell me you wish to be allowed to go, because I want you with me until the end" (p. 166).

Less known is the 'condition' he requested of the Polish pope for accepting to be Prefect of the CDF: "I can do so only if I will be allowed to continue writing my books".

Was it not an affront to the pope to set any condition? "Maybe. But I felt it was my duty to ask him. Because I felt an inner compulsion to be able to say something to the world" (p. 157).

His Newmanian idea of conscience is well known - the same by which he would interpret innovatively his own work as pope, when, for the first time in history, a pope wrote a book (a trilogy, really) on Jesus.

"Did you not reflect on whether it was right that a pope should write books?," Seewald asks. "I only knew that I had to write those books [on Jesus]". [Of course, this was a longstanding ambition of his, and in fact, he had begun writing the first volume a few months before he was elected pope.]

What conscience means to Benedict XVI he revealed in his last act of rebellion, the great act that has changed and renewed the papacy by its very occurrence: his renunciation on February 11, 2013. It is useful to re-read the Latin text of his announcement - As he said, "Something as important had to be said in Latin" (p. 33):

"Concientia mea iterum atque iterum coram Deo explorata..." ["After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God..." is the Vatican's official English translation]. The Italian translation [similar to the English, it uses the adverb ripetutamente, repeatedly] does not have the force of that expression iterum atque iterum [again and again] - "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that..." , which in the book, he re-states in less solemn and more colloquial terms.

Did you speak about your decision with anyone beforehand? "Abundantly so, with il buon Dio" (p. 33). I find that this sums up the fundamental commitment of the professor, the theologian and the pope to bear witness to modern man and document for him that faith is a reasonable assent to a Presence, that this free and rational act provides awareness of the meaning of life, of reality, and of one's own historical utility.

It means that the certainty of conscience does not arise from self-persuasion but from listening. "Theology is reflecting on what God has said and thought before us" (p. 10).

Faith is the question that Joseph Ratzinger as professor-theologian and Benedict XVI as pope wished to put back into the center of the life of the Church, and to the attention of the world. Its presentation in a new form and its acceptability in a world that has changed profoundly in the past century.

An epochal change whose signs he already read in the 1950s when, concretely experiencing the dualism evident among his first university students - who were attentive Catholics in class but inspired by other principles in the way they lived - he wrote "The new pagans and the Church", for which in some circles, he was called a heretic.

But he was tragically right. The problem, he re-states it today, is not to reform institutions, nor, to begin with, the empty churches and the lack of vocations. The basic problem is the faith [the absence or deficiency of it]. This is the key to understanding his youthful conviction ("I have not changed", he says on p. 150, "Just read what I have written") of the need for a renewal of the Church, his involvement in Vatican II, and the interpretation he gave of the Council in his famous address to the Roman Curia.

"Make great changes? What are they talking about? The important thing today is to preserve the faith. I consider this our central task. Everything else is administrative" (p. 207).

"It is clear that our principles no longer coincide with those of modern culture, that the fundamental Christian structure of society is no longer operational. Today, a positivist and agnostic culture prevails that is increasingly intolerant of Christianity.

Therefore, Western society - or in any case, European society - will no longer be a Christian society. But for more reason, the faithful should strive to continue forming and sustaining consciences with Christian values. It will be important to see a witnessing to faith that is more decisive than that of individual communities and local churches. The responsibility is much greater".

"To re-discover the centrality of faith" (p 217) is the task of Christians today, especially during a period of transition. "I do not belong any more to the old world, but the new one has not started" (p. 218) - in which "it is obvious that the Church is increasingly abandoning the traditional structures of European life, in which new forms have arisen. It is especially clear that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressive and that the Christian element is fast disappearing from the fabric of society. Therefore, the Church must find a new way to assert its presence, it should find a new way to present herself" (p 218). [But the Church is not doing that at all, because the reigning pope is doing all he can to encourage the Islamization of Europe, which is a contradiction of his primary mandate as pope to spread the Word of Christ, not to encourage anti-Christian ideologies and ways of life.]

A pope who is too philosophical? He does not dare call himself a philosopher - in his encyclical Spe salvi, he attributes this qualification to Christ himself.

"A very provocative attribution but one that liberates Christ from the robes of moralist or eschatological prophet to which so much modern exegesis seeks to limit him. Christ is a true philosopher because he introduces us - and is himself the way - to the profound meaning of life", as Prof. Stefano Alberto underscored in an interview in 2007 after the release of Spe salvi.

Benedict XVI points out that he tried above all "to be a shepherd" and that "professor and confessor philologically have virtually the same meaning" (p. 221), and that as a professor, he was also most sought after by his students as a confessor because he was known to be 'very generous' (p. 95).

Obviously, there is so much more in this book: it contains the judgments of a man who led the Church for eight years on the world leaders he has met; his relationship with Papa Wojtyla and his esteem for Pope Francis and his 'practical reform'; a reconstruction of the so-called scandals during his pontificate against the countless behind-the-scenes fantasies of supposedly 'well-informed' Vaticanistas; his citation of the volunteer movement that once animated the C&L annual Rimini Meetings as an example of an ever-present awareness of faith, in contrast to the worldly bureaucracy of German ecclesiastical structures; Manuel II Paleoloague who, even as a vassal of the Muslim Turks, "was free to say things that now cannot be said" [Oh please, tell that to your esteemed successor!]; even his artistic preferences, or his problems with wall-to-wall carpeting... In short, read it.

One last thing: Benedict XVI's laughter. The insert '(Laughs)' appears 50 times in the book, '(Smiles)" once, and "(Smiles contentedly)" once.

If Benedict should ever read these lines, let him not take offense at the following comparison: "I say it with reverence: There was in this irruptive personality a side one might call reserve: something he hid from all men when he went up the mountain to pray, something he constantly covered with a brusque silence, an impetuous isolation. It was something so great that God showed us when he walked the earth as a man. Sometimes I have imagined that this was his joy".

Chesterton wrote it about Jesus in Orthodoxy, but this is the way I have always thought about Joseph Ratzinger. [Casotto is the author of a 2011 book on Chesterton entitled L'enigma e la chiave (The enigma and the key) and is an active member of the Italian Chestertonian Society.. In 2009, he wrote a most beautiful article about Benedict XVI's very Pauline letter to the bishops of the world on the Williamson case. If I can find my translation, I will re-post it.]


I must thank Cindy Wooden at CNS for choosing to focus her first report on 'the book' on Benedict XVI's description of his prayer life these days...

Retired pope says old age brings
more intense prayer, awareness of judgment
by Cindy Wooden


VATICAN CITY, Sept. 9, 2016 (CNS) -- As he prays in his house in the Vatican Gardens and, especially, as he ages, retired Pope Benedict XVI said he finds many Scripture passages "more challenging in their greatness and gravity."

Retirement has given the 89-year-old Pope Benedict what he describes as the gift of silence to enter more deeply into prayer, especially with the Psalms and the writings of early church theologians, but the inevitable approach of death also makes his failings and God's judgment a more pressing concern, he said.

"Despite all the confidence I have that the loving God cannot forsake me, the closer you come to his face, the more intensely you feel how much you have done wrong," the retired pope told Peter Seewald, a German writer.

Pope Benedict's reflections on his life and his discussion of how his prayer life has changed as he ages are included in Seewald's new book-length interview, "Last Testament," which will be released in English by Bloomsbury in November. The German and Italian editions were in bookstores Sept. 9.

"I can now pray the breviary deeply and slowly," the retired pope said, "and thereby deepen my friendship with the Psalms, with the Fathers" of the church.

He said he uses a whole week to prepare his Sunday homily for his small household, thinking about the Scripture readings, allowing his thoughts to "mature slowly, so I can sound out a text from many different angles: What is it saying to me? What is it saying to the people here in the monastery?"

Pope Benedict listed four current favorite prayers -- three of which were written by Jesuits:
-- The "Suscipe" of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which begins: "Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it."
-- A prayer from St. Francis Xavier: "I do not love you because you can give me paradise or condemn me to hell, but because you are my God."
-- St. Nicholas of Flue's "Take me as I am."
-- And the General Prayer composed in German by St. Peter Canisius, which begins: "Almighty and eternal God, Lord, heavenly Father. Look with the eyes of your gratuitous mercy at our sorrow, misery and distress; have mercy on all Christian believers."

Pope Benedict, who knew and continues to admire the work of Father Romano Guardini, said he agreed with an affirmation the priest made, "In old age, it does not get easier, but more difficult."

"There is something true in it," he said. "On the one hand, in old age you are more deeply practised, so to speak. Life has taken its shape. The fundamental decisions have been made."

But at the same time, the pope said, "one feels the difficulties of life's questions more deeply; one feels the weight of today's godlessness, the weight of the absence of faith, which goes deep into the Church. But then one also feels the greatness of Jesus Christ's words, which evade interpretation more often than before."

Although sometimes comforted by new insights, he said he recognizes how "the depths of the word (of God) are never fully plumbed. And some words of wrath, of rejection, of the threat of judgment certainly become more mysterious and grave and awesome than before."

TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 12 settembre 2016 03:59


Pope: ‘No other interpretation’ of AL
but allowing communion for remarried divorcees

by John-Henry Westen and
Matthew Hofmann Cullinan

September 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — In a letter reportedly leaked by a priest in Argentina, Pope Francis writes that there is
“no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy
Communion in some cases.
[He does not exactly say that, but then, I do not know why Catholic media insist on playing 'Gotcha!' about this when he has made it quite clear that
Yes, AL does allow new possibilities that did not exist before. (See banner above). In fact, the letter is quite generic:


The letter, dated September 5, comes in response to a confidential document by the bishops of the Buenos Aires pastoral region to priests instructing them on the application of the Pope’s controversial apostolic exhortation. LifeSite has acquired copies of both original documents and has provided professional side-by-side translation.

The story was first published yesterday by the Spanish-language Catholic news service InfoCatolica and an anonymous Argentinean Catholic blogger whose blog is known as “The Wanderer.” The blogger has published photostatic copies of the original documents, and LifeSite has been informed that the blogger’s source is a priest in Buenos Aires. After consulting with sources, LifeSite believes that the blogger is trustworthy and that the copies of the letters are authentic.

The document by the bishops of the pastoral region of Buenos Aires interprets for priests in the region the 8th chapter of AL on how to deal with couples who are remarried after divorce but have not been granted annulments. It follows closely the language of the most controversial parts of the papal exhortation including the infamous footnote 351, which opens the door to what Cardinal Raymond Burke and other faithful bishops have called “sacrilege.”

The bishops’ directive called “Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia” says that in “complex circumstances” when the remarried couple could not “obtain a declaration of nullity,” the priests can nevertheless move forward to grant them access to Holy Communion.

If the priest recognizes that “in a particular case there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability (cf. 301-302), particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union,” says the directive, “Amoris Laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (cf. notes 336 and 351).”

[Yes, but on the other hand, the directive begins with the traditional ways of dealing with the issue first, and only then, proceeds to discuss the 'cases' which may allow sacramental leniency. In this respect, the bishops show some delicadeza - not jumping the gun to proceed to these new radical concessions in AL.]




The Pope’s letter affirms this path with effusive praise for the bishops’ work. Writing to the delegate of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region, Monsignor Sergío Alfredo Fenoy, the Pope says, “I thank you for the work they have done on this: a true example of accompaniment for the priests.”

Pope Francis adds: “The document is very good and completely explicit regarding the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations. And I am certain that there will be much good [from this.] May the Lord reward this effort of pastoral charity.”

The blogger who published the documents writes that the priests of the diocese met Thursday to discuss the matter. At the meeting, some priests were openly critical of both the bishops’ directive and the Pope’s document. The blogger adds that Cardinal Mario Poli was present at the meeting with a canon lawyer and that both contradicted the bishops’ directive, “clarifying that the Eucharist can only be received by those divorced and remarried who live together as brother and sister, maintaining chastity. [I would have made this the lead for the report - if it is true, it is the only real news here. For Cardinal Poli, JMB's successor as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, to take such a position, i.e., the orthodox, JP2-Familiaris consortio/B16-Sacramentum caritatis position, is rather remarkable.]

The leaked document is the first time there is explicit confirmation that Pope Francis interprets Amoris Laetitia as allowing communion for divorced and remarried Catholics without the condition that the couple in the irregular situation live as brother and sister without sexual relations, as was always required by the Church.

Neither the Vatican spokesman nor the chancery office of Buenos Aires were available for comment on this story.


I had put together a whole post about this two days ago when it was 'news', but just before I could click the 'Reply' button to post it, the computer froze, and since the old CTRL-ALT-DEL command no longer works to unfreeze, I had no choice but to reboot, which meant I lost the entire post because I composed it on Google Chrome, instead of Mozilla, which preserves your windows exactly as you left them if you reboot the computer, whereas Chrome will give you back the window, but if it is a working window like Reply Post, it will be empty and not contain whatever it was you had put in before it froze...

On top of which I have been experiencing horrible slowdowns of the Forum server - it's excruciating to think of the time I waste daily because it becomes 'non-responsive', waiting for it to respond so I can resume a translation or a personal commentary. I use a variety of EHRs (electronic health records) which involve a lot of free-form writing as in filling up a post on the Forum, but I never have such slowdowns at all.

Sorry to unload about this, but because of these constant inconveniences, it's become a daily hassle to keep up what I have to do here. It contributes to my increasing lack of regularity in posting.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 12 settembre 2016 06:35
It's 1:22 am - almost an hour now sine I first posted it, the following has now been superseded, but I will retain it as a record of the unexpected hazards and hassles I have been encountering lately with the Forum server. At 11:07 p.m., I found the following message to my horror on Page 547, in which I had spent the afternoon posting a number of lengthy items...



If any of you were able to read the posts I had on this page earlier today, you will realize my utter frustration at the mounting hassles of working with the Forum server, about which I beefed after my last post.

I had just inserted Cindy Wooden's admirable little item at CNS on Benedict XVI's prayer life today in his retirement - and as he seems to be openly not just 'preparing for death' but appearing to look forward to it (so far, I've glossed over this most unsettling and most unwelcome idea articulated by Seewald in the Zeit interview) - and pushed REPLY to post it, but instead of seeing it added to the post I had on Ubaldo Casotto's review of the interview book, I got the above result telling me "THERE ARE NO POSTS" on the page. How would it have had a page change if there were no posts to begin with???? But how do you argue with a machine?

I lost all the work I had done this afternoon - Peter Seewald's interview is still available, of course, as I had merely re-posted it on the new page, 547, to make it easily seen after the page change. But my translation of Antonio Socci's reaction to the book and of Ubaldo Casotto's unexpectedly off-the-beaten-track review - and both are lengthy articles - and the post I had reconstructed on JMB's letter about AL (at least the basic article for this was in English) - all lost.

And here I was, all happy today because at confession this morning, the second priest in two months to whom I have said "I do not consider it a sin, but I have been very critical of many things the Holy Father says and does" at the end of my list of sins, also passed over what I said, as did the first priest two months ago, and this priest spoke to me instead about how I should strengthen my prayer life so I can avoid my repetitive venial sins...

Anyway, other than re-posting the Seewald interview now, I won't be able to re-translate those two long articles, because I had been starting to translate Seewald's Foreword to the interview-book which kath.net has published in full...



Dear Lord - it gets worse. Now, the Seewald interview is not on Page 536 either... How could a cyber-poltergeist simply erase all those posts - because there is no single key stroke that would have made it possible to erase not just all the posts on page 537 but also the last post on page 536.

I will be able to recover the Seewald interview translation, though without any of the enhancements, because I had translated it on a Word document, and not in the PRF Cestino worksite I usually use - but that is where I translated the Socci and Ubaldo items, which means I overwrote the Socci translation with the Ubaldo article to translate, and then overwrote the Ubaldo article with the Seewald Foreword to translate...

Well, there's no rest for the damned... Or so I thought, but I just recovered the entire Seewald interview as posted from Mozilla's very helpful 'History' browser which retained my next-to-last revision of the post... And have likewise recovered the Socci and Casotto posts, which even has the CNS story I inserted...

....

And wonder of wonders, after I re-posted all the 'lost' posts, they all suddenly reappeared above this post, with the correct time-stamp of when I posted them first. So where did they go when I got the message above that 'THERE ARE NO POSTS' on page 547???... Cyber-poltergeism it has to be... Deo gratias, anyway, that I did not have to re-translate everything... And now, I can proceed to try and finish translating Seewald's Foreword...



TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 12 settembre 2016 16:39


September 12 is the anniversary of two of Benedict XVI's most important discourses to the secular world. (Thanks to Lella for
the video links. Those who know German and French, respectively, have a great and most rare spiritual-intellectual treat in store to
re-listen to these speeches.) One cannot imagine anyone in the world today capable of giving seminal speeches like these that will
live on and resound in history...

Today is the tenth anniversary of his most seminal secular discourse, the one most people refer to as the Regensburg lecture; and
the eighth anniversary of his address to the French secular world at the College des Bernardins in Paris about what Europe and Western
civilization in general owe the medieval Benedictines for rescuing Western culture as a consequence of their daily quest for God.


English text here:
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensb...


English text here:
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080912_parigi-cult...

For those who may not recall the Bernardins lecture as much as they do Regensburg, here is how the New York Times started its report on that address in 2008.

Pope addresses secularism in France
by Rachel Donadio

Sept. 12, 2008

PARIS — In his first visit to France as pope on Friday, Benedict XVI touched on central themes of his papacy — the tensions between faith and reason and church and state, as well as his efforts to reach out to Muslims and Jews — and urged an increasingly irreligious Europe to look back to its intellectual roots in Christian monastic culture.

“What gave Europe’s culture its foundation — the search for God and the readiness to listen to him — remains today the basis of any genuine culture,” he said.

Benedict spoke before 700 academics, cultural figures and Muslim leaders at the Collège des Bernardins, a new cultural center in a 13th-century monastery, a location he called “emblematic” for his remarks.

“Amid the great cultural upheaval resulting from migrations of peoples and the emerging new political configurations, the monasteries were the places where the treasures of ancient culture survived,” he said.

“It is through the search for God that the secular sciences take on their importance.”

His message went counter to a deep vein of anticlericalism in France, which has long drawn sharp distinctions between issues of faith and matters of temporal power....

And that was Benedict XVI - always courageous in challenging commonplace certainties, always with the ultimate message of bringing everyone to God, and God to everyone.


TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 14 settembre 2016 02:18


Benedict XVI’s “Final Conversations”
by Robert Royal

September 12, 2016

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s latest – and seemingly last – book, Final Conversations, appeared in Rome on Friday. It won’t be available in English until November though you can read it, in Italian only for now, on Kindle. It’s the fourth of such “conversations” with German journalist Peter Seewald and, like its predecessors, is a winsome encounter with Joseph Ratzinger, both as one of the greatest living minds, and as a charming and unassuming human being.

The advance notices of the book understandably tout some of the more notorious public episodes of his papacy: his handling of bishops and cardinals who protected abusive priests, the “Vatileaks” scandal (when Paolo Gabriele the papal butler stole sensitive documents in order “to protect” the pope), and – of course – Benedict’s resignation, something never before done by a sitting pope in full possession of his faculties.

All of more than passing interest to anyone concerned about Catholicism and the Church. But beyond such expected subjects, perhaps of even greater interest are some of the personal revelations Seewald – by now a trusted conversation partner – is able to elicit. Who knew, for instance, that Ratzinger is now blind in his left eye and has hearing loss, among other debilities of old age? Or that he still meticulously prepares Sunday sermons, even though his household consists of four of five persons?

To his credit, Seewald bores in on the big public subjects and doesn’t let up after one, two, three, or more tries to get a full answer. (The kind of interviewing we would benefit from – but almost never see – in the secular media.) For those of us who have had many questions about Papa Ratzinger’s last few years, this book helps a great deal, without perhaps ultimately answering all of them.

For example, Seewald presses Benedict about Vatileaks and its possible connections with his resignation. Rome has been filled with conspiracy theories about some sort of effort “to blackmail” Benedict. (It., ricattare, a word you don’t often hear in Italian, but don’t forget once you have.)

Benedict consistently replies to these probings that they are “absurdities”: the butler was a simple, misguided man, as later investigations showed; there was no blackmail because “there was nothing to blackmail about.” Anyway, “If they had tried it, I would not have left, because you don’t leave when you are under pressure to do so.”

But this opens up another large set of questions. Why, then, resign? You must have realized the effect it would have, not least that some people would come to think that the Petrine office was just another job, one you can leave like any other, at any time. It risks a secularization of the office. And especially after the heroic way St. John Paul II ended his life, you might be seen as having decided to refuse to bear the cross.

“Do you ever regret resigning, ever for just a minute?”
“No, I see every day that it was the right thing to do. . . .It was something that I had long reflected on, and which I had even long spoken about with the Lord.”

St. JPII had his own path to follow, and Benedict discerned what God wanted to be his. The Church needed someone who could handle the full range of papal responsibilities. It was a decision made in serenity, he even slept well the night before the announcement.

Pushed by Seewald on whether he had foreseen his successor, Benedict flatly says: no. Yes, Bergoglio was a strong candidate in the previous conclave, but by 2013 it seemed that was water under the bridge. He was surprised, but pleased ultimately – even praising the freshness that the pope has brought to the office and the global dimension he represents, now that Europe is, frankly, no longer the dynamic center of Catholicism.

All the above is a bare-bones account of the first part of the interview, but as you might expect, when you’re speaking with someone like Joseph Ratzinger, every one of these points is also accompanied by sharp insights and large perspectives about Christianity and the world – a performance not to be missed.

But neither is the second part of the book, wherein Seewald takes Ratzinger through the course of his whole life, beginning with his youth in Bavaria and his teen years under Nazism. They necessarily touch on the subject of the Church’s relationship with the Third Reich.

Ratzinger affirms, almost as something that goes without saying, that Catholics all knew that, if Hitler triumphed, the Church would be destroyed. After his defeat, not many wanted to be identified with the Nazi Party, so much so that his local pastor once joked: “When it’s all over, we’ll get to the point where they’ll say that the only Nazis were the priests.”

Everyone laughed, says Ratzinger, “No one could imagine such a thing. . . .The idea that the Church was in some way a collaborator never crossed our minds. It’s a later artifact.”

There are many pages here on the course of Ratzinger’s spiritual and intellectual life, his work at Vatican II, the hijacking of the Council by media savvy dissidents like Hans Küng, and the continuing chaos and division within the Church. But perhaps the most striking passage on these matters comes when Seewald asks how, precisely, a simple son of a Bavarian policeman became a priest – and one of the great thinkers and leaders of the modern world:
It was in order to enter more and more into the liturgy. To recognize that that the liturgy was truly the central point and to try to comprehend it, together with the whole historical development undergirding it. . . .Because of this, then, I became generally interested in religious questions. It was the world in which I felt myself at ease.

So there were no mystical experiences, no dramatic turning points? Don’t you ever have doubts or those famous “dark nights of the soul” even St. Mother Teresa had?

With his usual tranquility and humility: No, no doubts. And as to dark nights, “Such strong experiences, no. Maybe I’m not holy enough to reach that darkness.”


Angela Ambrogetti on ACISTAMPA, the Italian edition of CNA, has a great account of Mons. Gaenswein's beautiful words and original thoughts in presenting the original German edition of the book in Munich yesterday, but I must translate (and I have not progressed on translating Seewald's Foreword to the book, as I have been unable to work on the Forum for the past 24 hours or more)...

Mons Gaenswein on 'the book':
"B16 makes me think of 'The little Prince'"
by Angela Ambrogetti
Translated from


MUNICH, Sept. 12, 2016 (ACIStampa) - A heart-to-heart conversation between two Bavarians, and certainly not 'hard talk' in which the interviewer grills his subject.

That was how Archbishop Georg Gaenswein described the interview-book Letzte Gespraeche by Benedict XVI and Peter Seewald.

In the official presentation to the media at the Literaturhaus in Munich this morning, the Prefect of the Pontifical Household reviewed the principal parts of the conversations which correspond to the most significant phases of Joseph Ratzinger's life.

Noting that Seewald had incorporated notations of when Benedict XVI smiled, laughed or even shed tears during their conversations, Gaenswein recounted his own emotions on reading the book.

Once again, he underscored that the only reason Benedict XVI stepped down as pope was his increasing physical infirmity. This was a choice made with 'innocent determination', he said, recalling the time in May 1945 when the then 17-year-old Ratzinger decided to desert his post as a conscript serving with a commmunications unit of the German army . "I must go home", he told himself, and he did, 'risking all and therefore saving all', Gaenswein said.

"But it went well," the emeritus commented on that wartime escape. Gaenswein says, "I must admit that when reading that part, I experienced a sort of deja vu, which made me ask myself whether we should look to that determinative episode of his youth which saved his life for a key to understand the spectacular step he took very late in life when he decided - as certain as a sleepwalker, overcoming all obstacles and many good reasons to reach his decision - he simply and silently decided, "I must go home".

The archbishop underscored that the book makes clear how Benedict XVI is remote from all tactical and political considerations, and how for him, it is important to remain the professor that he was, even if the traits associated with it have been used to attack him.

"In a certain sense," Gaenswein ventured, "this book operates in a non-spectacular way as a last deconstruction of the old image of him held by friend and foe alike. Never does he allow his interviewer to place him on a pedestal. He objects obstinately and is recalcitrant when others try to sketch a monument of him - sabotaging in an amused way, amiably, every chance he gets, any attempt to canonize him in life, as it were. In historico-critical terms, he continually demythologizes himself, even with Seewald".

Gaenswein also says the conversation highlights the simplicity and innocence with which
This very erudite man of the Church with his answers seems like an innocent child who is mysterious and unfathomable, yet he has sat on Peter's Chair. A child of the Holy Spirit, who, in the midst of a brilliant analysis, recounts naturally how he used to enjoy playing 'Mensch ärgere Dich nicht' (Don't get angry!) [a popular board game invented by a Munich man at the sart of the 20th century, combining elements from Ludo and parcheesi]. Someone nonetheless who always needed a strong spirit if only to deal with all the 'filth' from the priestly sex abuses whose files he came to know at the CDF. .. A great child of God, with disarming gentleness, who, like St. Augustine, yearns passionately to reach that 'always' in Psalm 105 that urges us, 'Always look for his face', a child who now wants to go home, 'where everything will be as beautiful as home was for us when we were children'."

But of course, he is also a man of profound thought, smiling sweetly, as from remote times, 'almost prehistoric times', as he himself once commented ironically. Despite his intelligence and exceptional culture, he is never arrogant and enamoured of power, nor a f'earful inquisitor' as he has often been seen and described by his 'not friends'.

"Personally," Gaenswein concludes his presentation. "I must admit that while reading this book, the image of Antoine de St. Exupery's 'Little Prince' came to mind more than once, if I may be allowed to borrow from the French poet-pilot. But I smile doing so: I imagine this little papal prince in his red shoes who has fallen down from the sky to us like a heavenly messenger from a remote star. Even if, from close familiarity, I know perhaps better than anyone else that neither Joseph Ratzinger nor Benedict XVI can be fully comprehended in that poetic figure".

Edward Pentin, who writes about Mons. Gaenswein's presentation in Munich has appended the National Catholic Register's translation of GG's full address - and it is with infinite pain and disillusion that I remark and have final confirmation of certain statements about Pope Francis made by Benedict XVI that I find completely incomprehensible, and to me, absolutely unacceptable, because the statements are irreconcilable not just with objective facts but with everything that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI stood for, or so I believed.

If this is an aberration of late age, has the Pope of Reason succumbed to a form of senile dementia? To treat this enthusiasm for Bergoglio and everything he does, so it seems, as an isolated aberration in an 89-year-old man is the only way I can carry on with the love and admiration that I have nurtured for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI all these many years, and because it repels me like some ugly malignant excrescence, I shall strive to avoid further mention of it if I can help it, so it does not contaminate everything that is true and good and beautiful in him. Words I never imagined I would have to write...

The last Amen
by Mons. Georg Gaenswein
Translated from the German by Richard Krema
Book Launch
Benedict XVI: Last Testament
With Peter Seewald
Droemer, Munich
Sept. 12, 2016



Ladies and Gentlemen!
Exactly ten years ago today - at exactly this hour – Pope Benedict XVI gave the speech of the century in Regensburg at his old Alma Mater when he quoted a dialogue of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II and an educated Persian on Christianity, Islam, and the truth from 1391.

Retrospectively, the speech seems prophetic to some today, although it also caused an initial uproar in the Islamic world for which the western journalists mocked him from then on as the “professor pope.”

Indeed today the Catholic Church still celebrates - as it did ten years ago - the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary. It is a commemoration of the victory of the Christian armies of Europe in the battle of Vienna where she stopped the Ottoman takeover of the western world on September 12, 1683 during the Papacy of Pope Innocent XI.

“On the Feast of Mary’s Name, summer says amen” one said in Catholic Germany, especially in the country, where I come from and grew up and where the 12th of September has also had a very practical juridical importance for a long time. It was the end of the harvest and as of today, the poor of the surrounding areas were therefore allowed to pick the remaining grain from the harvested fields.

And perhaps this last aspect is an almost providential reason for this gathering, where I have the honor to introduce Peter Seewald’s book, Last Testament with Benedict XVI, whom I have served since 2003 as his private secretary and who after his resignation very personally reviewed this book.

Now an initial clarification may be helpful here. This Final Testament is not some aggressive “hard talk” in the style of the prominent BBC series, and Peter Seewald did not at all try to journalistically “grill” Benedict XVI as it is so delightfully called in the Anglo-Saxon media world today.

Instead the book contains accounts of friendly conversations before and after the Pope’s resignation in an intensive inquiry of memories where two very different, though Bavarian souls through and through – I’m allowed to say that as someone who comes from the Black Forest – find common ground in inflection and heart.

Peter Seewald already asked Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the big questions twenty years ago for Salt of the Earth and God and the World as well as Pope Benedict XVI for Light of the World eight years ago. Joining these significant conversations is a new volume of conversations with a selection of curious questions that Seewald himself still had.

These questions were in a field that seemed to be already harvested. This field is the biography of Joseph “Benedict” Ratzinger where Seewald has been working for years but has clearly struggled to continue.

Besides a variation of already known details about his life, the answers of the Papa Emeritus are therefore surprising due to a very distinct and new intimacy that carries the reader along.

There is also an almost blunt way of speech in this book - like if we would experience here something from the mouth of the retired Pope about the big mouth of his adversary, Hans Küng. Or, especially today here on the Munich Salvatorplatz, we would hear from the former Archbishop of Munich and Freising how he speaks without a filter of the “people of Munich and their little megalomania,” which according to his opinion they indeed “have.” Or where we suddenly unexpectedly read in another sequence of the Benedict XVI's mother who was born out of wedlock, which they discuss frankly.

This casual tone provides this volume with an occasional almost enchanting fluency and mirth where it frequently says in brackets before Benedict’s answers: “Takes a deep breath,” “breaths deeply,” “grins,” “laughs,” “laughs out loud,” “laughs amusingly,” “laughs hard” or “the Pope roars with laughter” – for example, on Seewald’s question whether Joseph Ratzinger then in the time of the council really went “carousing” through Roman Trastevere with the Theological Commission.

Thus, it touches us even more that we read once - on page 61 – unexpectedly in parentheses, “the Pope cries,” before the old man speaks about that evening hour of February 28, 2013 when he hovered over the chimes of all the bells of Rome in the white helicopter and floated away to Castel Gandolfo towards the twilight of his life.

Then, “I knew,” he said, that in that moment “of hovering over and hearing the bells of Rome ring at the same time, I knew then that I may give thanks and that the prevailing mood is gratitude. That has moved me very much.”

On that flight, I sat next to him and was deeply shocked myself, as everyone knows who followed this send-off on the screen. And I know that he, as opposed to myself, did not cry at that moment, if I am allowed to disclose that here, and I myself still have the bells of Rome beneath us in my ear from that fateful flight before we landed at his beloved Castel Gandolfo where he said farewell one last time as the Pope on the balcony of the Papal palace with a “Buona sera” to the people on the square and to all the Catholics of the world.

Yet I must honestly confess that at certain places in the reading, I could be moved to tears when I read in these accounts again and again what a passionate walker and hiker the old Pope was in his time. “I always walked well,” he said at a certain point. “I hiked a lot,” he said at another. I bear in mind - above all today - how the fervent hiker came to always take smaller steps from day to day.

After the last several months, nobody had to show me the positive significance of his resignation from his extremely difficult office. Because I see it every day with my own eyes, what no book can explain to my mind.

Does this volume depict a new image of Pope Benedict XVI the person to the readers?

Here I may and must take myself out of course because I keep him, as I said, in mind every day, and on almost any day I could conduct new “last testaments” with him. Seewald’s anecdote-rich background conversations are for me just decoration.

However, the public perception of Benedict XVI the person nevertheless will be enriched by many surprising and revealing facets – and indeed the good Bavarian “chatting” conversation tone. In more than one respect, this book supplements and corrects the acquaintance of many readers with the first pontificate of the third millennium in a casual, yet perhaps decisive way.

Here in this book is firstly the nexus of roots of the reasons and motives and the exact circumstances of Benedict’s puzzling resignation. Secondly, his relationship to his successor, Francis. Thirdly, his personal point of view on the different crises and “scandals” of his papacy and not least, the profoundly human dimension of probably the last of the western Monarchs at the top of the Catholic Church.

To him, power never meant anything, and he described the “happiest time” of his life as those twelve months or so after his ordination on June 29, 1951 when he worked for a year as a young parochial vicar at Sacred Blood Parish in Munich.

So to begin with the first one:
Peter Seewald never asked the Holy Father the well-known Quo vadis question – that legendary “where are you going?” question just as Christ asked Peter when the prince of the apostles and predecessor of all popes fled the burning capital, which the emperor Nero set on fire, across the Via Appia.

Seewald also did not ask about that passage from Benedict’s inauguration homily on April 24, 2005, where the newly elected Pope asked the faithful to “Pray for me that I may not flee from the wolves!”

Here we see why. The questions would never have fit anywhere. For the Papa emeritus makes it clear time and again: it was not an escape, Rome didn’t burn, no wolves howled under his window and his house was in good order when he gave the baton back into the hands of the College of Cardinals.

Or in his own words: “I am convinced that it was not fleeing, certainly not from practical pressure, which was not there. You can never leave if it is running away. You may never yield to coercion. You may not flee in the moment of the storm, but must withstand. You cannot step back if nobody demands it. And nobody has demanded it in my day. Nobody. It was clear to me that I had to do it and that this was the right moment. It was a complete surprise for everyone.”

The doctor had told him he was no longer allowed to fly across the Atlantic. Because of the Football World Cup, the next World Youth Day was pushed up from 2014 to 2013. Otherwise he would have tried to hang on until 2014. “But I knew: I can’t do it anymore.” And all other “things were completely settled in February 2013.” He saw then that the time had come “to disengage from the large crowds of people and adjourn into this greater intimacy.”

It was, he further says, “however not an inner flight from the demand of the faith, which leads the people to the cross. The step is not a flight but another way to remain faithful to my ministry.”

Did he regret the resignation even for just a minute?
The answer is vehement: “No. No, no. I see that it was right every day.” There was no aspect that he had not considered. If anything, everything only got better even than he could have planned! Hence this too: “I cannot see myself as a failure. I did my ministry for eight years.”

And what about the many conspiracy theories - Seewald wanted to know - which never wanted to be silenced after his resignation. Extortion? Conspiracy? The Papa emeritus only had one answer to them, curtly answered, “Total nonsense!” – Truly, this remains to be learned from his actions and to be taken to heart as new knowledge: “The Pope is not super human. If he resigns, he keeps the responsibilities in an inner sense but not the role. In this respect, the papacy lost nothing from its size, even if the humanity of the office emerges perhaps more clearly.”

As I said, since I stay in contact daily with Benedict XVI, all of these things were not new and I can only emphasizes it as authentic. Personally, I must however say that another passage appeared to me in this context somehow new and distinctive and especially illuminating, even if it appears in a totally other place in the book.

“End of April, beginning of May 1945,” Seewald reminds him of a statement from the memories of Joseph Ratzinger from 1998, where it said, “I decided to go home.” That sounded terse. Joseph Ratzinger was 17 years old in 1945 and conscripted at one of the anti-aircraft sites in the vicinity of his home. “In reality, it was desertion,” Seewald reminded him, “which was punishable by death. Were you not aware of that?”

His answer: “Looking back, I am astonished about that. I knew that guards were there and that one would be immediately shot and that it could only actually end badly. Why I still so unconcernedly went home, I can no longer explain the degree of naivety I had reached.

But it ended well and not badly! And here, I must confess, a kind of Deja-vu experience befell upon me when I read this, yet in a inverse sense, which posed the question of whether in this defining life-saving experience of Joseph Ratzinger’s youth there is also a hidden key for which to be searched to explain his spectacular step at the end of life. He was so certain of this like a sleepwalker against 1000 aggressors and many good reasons in the summer of 2012 a second time and calmly “decided to go home.”

Here I come to my second point. What did the global public learn about the relationship of Papa Emeritus to his successor, Francis?

First: he had absolutely not envisaged Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The Archbishop of Buenos Aires was “a big surprise.” He had no notion of his successor at all. As he saw after the election however – on the television in Castel Gandolfo – how the new pope “spoke on one side with God and on the other side with the people. I was really glad to see that. And happy.”

And what did he say about Francis appearing on the Loggia all in white without the red Mozzetta, the traditional cape of the popes until then? “He did not want to have the Mozzetta. That did not concern me at all.” But “this aspect of warmth, of very personal affection, I have previously (of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires) not experienced as such. That was a surprise for me!”

And is he satisfied with the papacy of Francis up to this point? He answered straightforwardly, “Yes, there is suddenly a new freshness in the Church, a new joy, a new charisma that addresses the people, which is something beautiful. Many are thankful that the new pope now approaches them in a new style. The pope is the pope, it doesn’t matter who it is.” With his manner, he has “absolutely no problem. On the contrary, I find it good, yes. “ To his own pontificate he sees “no breach anywhere.” He sees “new accents yes, but no contradictions. He is a man of practical reform. And that is the courage with which he addresses problems and searches for solutions.”

And still more: in some respect he sees himself and his Petrine ministry through his successor as also corrected, as he openly acknowledged. For instance, “through the direct affection for the people. That is very important. He is definitely a man of reflection. And a thoughtful person, but at the same time someone who is used to always being with people. And perhaps I was actually not with the people enough.”

One finds an astounding measure of self-criticism – flavored with some self- irony – within the memories that Peter Seewald recalls in him and also the capability of having almost child-like joy up to an old age. At the Council for example, in which he participated as a young and promising advisor of Cardinal Frings from Cologne, and about the reform of the Council in which he “now still delights,” he admitted however unconditionally: “We thought then overly theological and did not consider, what public image these things would have,” and there “were also many destructions and delusions.” In those days, he saw himself after all as a progressive. Others thought he was a free mason, who became “repeatedly denigrated.” Why? “Because I was just incapable or something. And naturally also heretical and so on.”

Actually, he is also frequently astonished by himself, and his “naivety,” as he calls it, and about “the brazenness with which I then – at the time of the council – spoke,” who also now describes himself – answering Seewald’s unbelieving and surprised question – as a “true fan of John XXIII” and his “total unconventionality.”

As Archbishop of Munich and Freising, he had stopped with the usual bicycle riding because he “dared to be not so unconventional.” He was never one who crawled to the bigwigs and bullied the underlings. He never crawled and crawled for nobody. On the contrary, in his almost proverbial innocence he often encouraged and protected his enemies and “non-friends” like perhaps Hans Küng or Cardinal Kasper as well.

If he had resigned a week later, his Swabian Cardinal colleage – because he was soon approaching the age limit for a cardinal’s possible participation in the papal election – would not have been able to participate in the election! Indeed such thoughts, like all the tactical and strategic power games were foreign to him his whole life long. “Everyone knew that I did not do politics,” he once said, “and that inhibits enmity. You know that he is not dangerous.”

Now he writes homilies for Sundays for four, five, sometimes eight or nine people in his “little monastery” even though he used to speak in front of thousands. It is all the same for him. The mocking language of the “professor pope” however was clearly more of a compliment to him than defamatory, perhaps from his inability to also think cynically. Because “I am really more of a professor- someone who ponders and considers intellectual things. I wanted to be a real professor for life.”

That he was and still remained: a German university professor, who enjoyed imitating voices like Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Swiss German and wrote down all of his countless speeches and works until the end with pencil in a self developed ultra-shorthand handwriting in order to be able to keep up with the speed of his thoughts.

And even in times of crises at night, he never let that rob him of his seven to eight hours of necessary sleep, not even his siesta, which he has been used to taking since 1963 – since his Roman Council years – as someone who above all enjoyed sitting at his desk very much and whose indispensable instrument to birthing his profound thoughts was a comfortable sofa. Quote: “I always need a sofa. And absolute quiet if possible.”

“The political meaning” of his Regensburg speech and its international uproar was something, which he openly admits in this tranquility, that he simply “did not assess properly.” [???] The great thinker and writer frequently had a great impact that was often unintended like a wunderkind.

When he arrived in Rome on March 1, 1982 to take over as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he could hardly speak Italian and did not have time for an Italian language course. “I learned Italian only by conversation. That also continued to be my handicap of course.” As in the beginning, he reverted at the end – at his resignation address – to Latin, which he commands brilliantly even today.

Frankly he admits with a certain caution and timidity that his ability to judge other people’s character is not his strength. He often “was very careful and cautious because,” as he says, “I have often experienced the limits of other people’s and my own judgment of other’s characters.”

In September 1991, the non-smoker and non-drinker suffered a brain hemorrhage. “Now I can’t do it anymore,” he told John Paul II thereafter, who then categorically rejected his resignation. “’91 to ’93 were difficult, burdensome years,” he said laconically. In 1994, he had an embolism as well and after that, he had a yellow speck on his retina. Since then, he has seen very poorly with his left eye years before his election to become successor of Peter. He never made a fuss about it. The half-blind pope! Who knew?!

Perhaps that is why Benedict XVI never became so human for many people like he does in this last book – in his great strengths and his miniscule weaknesses and disabilities. He never laughed so much in his other interview books. And never cried.

I had to read the proofs often, and I kind of read the book once more one night at the end. There were many pages that I had could have almost repeated from memory.

Do we find perhaps his testament or a last correction of his testament in these last statements of Benedict XVI? Not really. His testament as Pope is found in the nine volumes of the Insegnamenti, which he bequeathed from his papacy, and above all in his books on Jesus that he “simply had to write because the Church is finished if we don’t know Jesus anymore.” And we find some testamentary insights in Salt of the Earth, God and the World, and Light of the World, which Peter Seewald wrote down.

In a certain sense, this book achieves in an unspectacular casual way a final deconstruction of his old image with friend and foe. He does not accept anywhere that the interviewer puts him on a pedestal. He stubbornly balks at a draft of a monument of himself, and he is amused by every attempt of his own canonization during his lifetime that he in the kindest way as only he can, sabotages. Or - historically and critically said – he demythologizes himself again and again, even towards Peter Seewald.

In these conversations’ realm of trust, Seewald questions him sometimes as curious as a child questions his grandfather. Of course, the very erudite cleric himself seems here more than once in his answers to be as innocent as a child, who sat for a long time on the papal throne puzzled and inscrutable.

He was like a child of the Holy Spirit, who between two brilliant analyses could speak so naturally about how much he could delight in games “like ‘Parcheesi’ and such things,” when he for so long “needed a strong soul to digest all of the filth,” which came into his sight as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

As a big child of God with a disarming meekness, who was yearning like St. Augustine longed to attain ultimately in that “constant,” as it says in Psalm 105, “seek his face constantly” – and as a child who always wanted to go home “where it will be so lovely to be again like it was at our home.”

But also as a subtle and quiet smiling man from a distant age, he reveals himself here from a “quasi prehistoric time,” as he himself half-ironically noted. Despite his superior and awakened intelligence and formation, he does not resemble, even from afar, a power-loving person who would love to be bigger than he really is or a scary high-inquisitor at all like he is often distortedly misrepresented by his “non-friends.”

Personally, I must confess, the readings of this testament made me recall more than once the melancholic image from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince – if you allow me to borrow this from the French pilot and poet of the sky – and I myself have to laugh about this: a papal little prince in red shoes (in the shoes of the fisher!). From a distant star as a fallen messenger from heaven/the sky for our time, although I know from the upmost closeness probably better than anyone else that neither Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger nor Benedict XVI is by no means taken up in this poetic figure.

That should be enough.

I would like to conclude with the farming wisdom of the day from the beginning of this introduction, “On the Feast of Mary’s Name, summer says amen.” Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your attention.



TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 14 settembre 2016 12:35




Quick, do you remember any speech at all in living memory whose anniversary has been marked and remarked upon every
year since the event itself?

Sure, we remember great lines like Winston Churchill's "You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea,
land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny,
never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer
in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs..." when he took over the wartime leadership of the UK in 1940; or John Kennedy's
'Ask not what your country can do for you...". or Martin Luther King's "I have a dream...", or Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall".
But are the anniversaries of these speeches ever marked?

I think that is a measure of how seminal and epochal the Regensburg address was - and I get shivers down my spine when I
recall the spiritual inebriation that came over me that day ten years ago when I read the text for the first time (it was
akin to the high I experienced when I first read Spe salvi and still experience every time I reread it). So caught up
in its power and beauty, I thought right away that it was a work that had to be read by as many people as could read...



Luckily for me, Fr. Schall came up with his initial appreciation of the lecture within two days...



This is the appreciation I would have wished to write had I the academic competence to do it! It was written before
all the nastiness began, and so Father Schall's informed and highly readable appreciation is pristine, beautifully so!.....

The Regensburg Lecture:
Thinking Rightly About God and Man
by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
September 15, 2006

I.
On September 12, on his visit to his native Bavaria, Benedict XVI gave a formal academic lecture at the University at which he formerly was a professor. It is a brilliant, stunning lecture, and it is a lecture, not a papal pronouncement.

It brings into focus just why there is a papacy and why Catholicism is an intellectual religion. Indeed, it is a lecture on why reason is reason and what this means.

The scope of this lecture is simply breathtaking, but also intelligible to the ordinary mind.

In watching my computer and listening to various colleagues the day after this address was given, I felt a kind of hush in the air. Something important had happened, something more than the ordinary went on in Regensburg, something that was addressed to the heart of modernism but also to Islam, our current enigma. When I read the lecture, I understood why.

We are familiar with John Paul II's many academic discourses. These two men, Wojtyla and Ratzinger, are of the same elevated stature, men who speak to us of the highest things when almost no one else will or even can. They can somehow go over the heads of the censors, whatever they are called, in media and politics who will not talk about what is really true.

Benedict brings his own style, his own scope of mind that ranges critically over the whole range of philosophy, history, theology, politics, and ordinary common sense.

This lecture is in the direct line of John Paul II's Fides et Ratio, but with Benedict's more direct emphasis on the distinctiveness of Catholicism and its mind. Not every "ecumenical" idea is a good one. Some ideas are not true, even though untruth can contain some truth.

Benedict, make no doubt, is the clearest and most incisive mind in the public order in the world today. This fact will not make everyone happy and will make not a few furious. Not everyone, as we are warned in our scriptures, is willing to accept the truth. We should not be naïve about this, nor should we despair of the truth because it is refused. It is a seed that will grow in good ground.

Pope Ratzinger is clearly at home here in Regensburg. He affectionately recalls the many familiar chats, discussions, and, I suppose, arguments in which he participated in its coffee shops and recreation rooms with his students and colleagues. He obviously has fond memories of the place. Indeed, the word "memories" appears in the title of the lecture.

A university, he reminds us --with shades of Ex Corde Ecclesiae -- ought to be a place where the highest things can be spoken of without apology and without fear of reprisal from the political structure of society or, for that matter, from the political structure of the university itself, no mean feat on either score.

We would be fools if we thought that this freedom to speak the truth is not a serious problem in today's world, particularly when we speak of the Islamic world, a topic with which the pope begins his lecture. Indeed, this may be the first time since Urban II that a pope has formally taken up the question of Islam in any way.

It is something that I have often thought was the greatest contemporary need of modern culture and politics, as well as the modern Church.

Benedict obviously knows that the proclamation and teaching that God is Triune and that Christ is the incarnate Word, true God and true man -- the central doctrines of the Christian faith -- are not allowed public space in Islamic lands or in Islamic law.

So it is a welcome surprise that he finds a gentle way to talk about precisely this problem from within the historic relations between Islam and Christianity. Furthermore, he talks about it precisely in terms of the theological and rational understanding of God and the world.

[How much significance the above two paragraphs take on, in the light of all that has followed since!]

This lecture is an almost fierce defense of reason both within philosophy and within the faith. Thus, it is a challenge to both Western and Islamic thought. It is also another effort to recall Europe to what it is, a unique place because of its history -- not just another "culture."

II.

This pope can be amusing. He begins with a reflection that when he taught at the University of Bonn there were two faculties of theology; I presume one was Catholic and one was Protestant. A skeptical professor once quipped of this odd situation that in this university "it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God."

But, of course, Professor Ratzinger did not let the colleague get by with this too facile excuse for not thinking about God. The gentleman's disbelief in God still had to stand the test of reason; it has to justify itself, if it could. When looked at, the reasons for disbelief in God were not all that persuasive.

The pope begins the lecture by recalling an encounter, during the siege of Constantinople in the early 1400's, between the learned Byzantine Emperor Manuel II and a wise Persian gentleman on the differences between Islam and Christianity. The very fact that the pope would bring this topic up is a sign that he recognizes the crucial importance of this difference.

As readers know, I have long been advocating that the Catholic Church in particular must begin to tell us what it thinks Islam is, with its claims for an understanding of Allah as pure will, with its denial of otherness in the Godhead or the possibility of the Incarnation.

Benedict makes a very significant beginning here, I think. What the pope presents is a very brief, but very incisive critique of the notion that the proper understanding of God is that God can contradict himself in his decrees so that certain political or moral actions are thereby justified as obedience to God.

We should understand the significance of this issue. Can God change his "reason," that is, can he make what was evil to be good or reasonable? Is what is good or evil dependent on a kind of whim of God so that worship of God means following whatever God is said to say even if it is contradictory to what He said previously. Does the Koran negate the Old and New Testaments? Does it negate reason? In other words, is God's revelation stable? Can we rely on its truth to be true everywhere and always?

We obviously have the suicide bombers clearly in sight here. We have the jihad here. Can such things be God's will? Can killing oneself along with innocent others be an act of "martyrdom?" Must we worship God by being "submissive" to such theories? What is the source of such ideas?

What the pope makes clear is that it is not the Christian scripture that would justify such things. In brief, he rejects that central notion that Allah or God is pure will who can make anything right or wrong such that religion means simply "obedience" to whatever is proposed no matter how lethal.
III.

But the pope does not only have Islam in mind. He has universities in view, as well as modern thought and other "cultures." The scope of this lecture is breathtaking.

But essentially, it is first a theology of history -- it was no accident that the early apostles went to Macedonia, to the Greeks with their minds.

The first thing that the early Christian mind had to encounter was mind itself, best represented by the Greeks, perhaps only by them at the time.

What was at stake was this very issue about the Word -- the Logos -- about whether it was a kind of amorphous flux that could be this or that, good or bad, according to whatever it decided.

Or was there a fundamental distinction in things, a realism that would eventually justify science and all else that man has discovered? Science, after all, has certain theological presuppositions that make it possible to be practiced.

This address is likewise a brief history of modern European philosophy -- that philosophy with roots in the two Testaments and in Greek and Roman thought.

But Benedict recognizes that the modern mind is now more relativistic and skeptical. The modern mind doubts that there is reason, and doubts that we can both know and believe. It doubts that faith and reason belong to the same sphere, yet that is what Europe is.

And Europe is not just another "culture," but is the culture in which the confrontation of reason and revelation took place and in which the relations were hammered out.

It is not without profound interest that the pope chose precisely a university in which to deliver this lecture. It is not an encyclical. It is not a "doctrinal" statement. It is not a homily.

It is a lecture to a university faculty and to its students -- and not just to those in Regensburg sitting before him. In this sense it strikes at the very heart of the intellectual acaedia, to the intellectual sloth, of our time, to the refusal to think about the important things with the tools that we have been given.

What we know as universities in the modern world originated in the Church, in a space in which the whole could be talked about.

Benedict knows that all disorders in politics and morals originate in the minds of the learned. It is there that we must begin to address our public issues, including that of Islam, but also questions of life, of morality, and of what we are about.

The Holy Father had already made clear in Deus Caritas Est that love of our neighbor is not primarily a government project, that justice is not enough, and often is not even a beginning. We simply cannot just talk of "faith" and "justice" without beginning and ending in charity and the reasons for it.

The Christian suspicion is not that we must first be just and then we can be loving and charitable, but that we will, in all likelihood, only be just if we first find caritas. And this realization often means the Cross and suffering, just as Christ taught.

III.

But with this lecture we are in heady academic surroundings. All is genteel. All is formal. All is, yes, "intellectual." But it is here where the real battles lie hidden.

What we see in Regensburg are, after Deus Caritas Est, the second shots of the new pope at the heart of what is wrong in our world and its mind. These "shots," however, are designed to do what all good intellectual battle does, namely, to make it possible for us to see again what is true and to live it.

The Regensburg Address, I suspect, will go down as one of those seminal and incisive analyses that tell us who we are and where we are.

It will remind us of what we are by teaching us again to think about the God that the skeptics, the dons, the theological faculties, including Muslim faculties, have too often obscured for us.

Civilization depends also on thinking rightly about God and man -- all civilization, not just European or Muslim. Such is the reach of this lecture.



The memorial articles this year:

Regensburg 10 years later
by IAN TUTTLE

September 12, 2016

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Regensburg Address. Delivered by a 79-year-old Joseph Ratzinger, then 18 months into his papacy, the lecture is primarily remembered for the garment-rending it occasioned in the Muslim world, and among Christianity’s cultured despisers in Europe and the U.S.

But Ratzinger’s “controversial” quotations from a 14th-century dialogue between Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian Muslim were not intended to provoke; they were, rather, the starting point for a meditation on the relationship of faith and reason in the contemporary West, particularly in the university.

For Ratzinger, the restoration of theology — i.e., “inquiry into the rationality of faith” — to its traditional place among the sciences is necessary if we seek “that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.” Ten years on, Ratzinger’s words seem even more urgent.

Tuttle provides the link to the full address:
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensb...
as well as to Samuel Gregg’s reflections on this anniversary, which I am posting in full below... But first, this from Phil Lawler:

Ten years later, recognizing
the prophetic message of the Regensburg address
By Phil Lawler

Sept 12, 2016

Ten years ago today — on September 12, 2006 — Pope Benedict XVI delivered his memorable address at Regensburg. The speech drew violent protests from the Islamic world, scolding rebukes from Western political leaders, and even embarrassed demurrals by other Catholic leaders (including then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires).

Writing for Crux today, veteran Vatican-watcher John Allen accurately describes the Regensburg address as “perhaps the most controversial papal speech of the last half-century.”

However, Allen goes on to observe that the overwrought reactions were generally directed against arguments that Pope Benedict had not advanced in his lecture. It was not a speech intended an indictment of Islam. Allen explains:
Put as simply as possible, Benedict was arguing at Regensburg that the choice for faith is not irrational, and that currents in the West that style it as such are the real enemies of enlightenment and progress.

Yes, it’s true that in the course of making this argument, Pope Benedict made the trenchant observation that the Islamic world has also wrestled, not very successfully, with the relationship between faith and reason. But that was only a part of his overall argument, and not the main part. In Catholic World Report , James Day notes that of the sixteen paragraphs in the Pope’s text, only three touched on Islam.

Insofar as he did speak about Islam, Pope Benedict remarked that the history of Muslim violence is at odds with the Qu’ran’s prescription that: “There is no compulsion in religion.” Thus the Pontiff challenged responsible Muslim leaders to renounce religious violence and confirm the role of human reason — just as he challenged Western leaders to confirm the role of reason in the discussion of religious claims.

At the time, Pope Benedict’s challenge to Islam was interpreted by most Western commentators as a blunder. Editorial writers — apparently working on the assumption that they understood these issues much better than the Pope — lamented his undiplomatic “gaffe.”

But a decade later, questions about the relationship between Islam and terrorism can no longer be dismissed so easily. John Allen writes: “Ten years later, there’s a mounting sense that perhaps the world owes Benedict an apology.”

If the mainstream media missed the point of the Regensburg address regarding the Pope’s comments on Islam, the commentators were virtually silent regarding the Pope’s challenge to Western secularism. In a way, that reaction illustrated Benedict’s point.

The portions of his speech that could be wrenched out of context to whip up emotions were covered exhaustively (if not accurately); the main thrust of his remarks, with the demand for rational discussion of reasonable claims, was ignored. Pope Benedict said that the world of 2006 was not ready for a reasoned discussion of religious affairs, and his critics proved his point.

In another thoughtful reflection for the 10th anniversary of the Regensburg address, Samuel Gregg explores the Pope’s main argument: his insistence on the power of reason to illuminate religious claims. “Not only did Ratzinger reiterate the need to reject fideism, the type of faith that leads one to fly planes into buildings or cut the throat of an elderly priest, but he also underscored that reason confirms what revelation tells us to be true about God,” Gregg writes.

He makes a convincing case that Benedict XVI realized the likely reaction to his speech, but thought the argument worth making despite the consequences:
To identify the pathologies of faith and reason that characterize the Muslim world and the West, he was willing to pay a high price in terms of rage from fideists and contempt from many who consider themselves enlightened.



Regensburg, Ratzinger,
and our crisis of reason
by Samuel Gregg

September 12th, 2016

Against the Age of Feelings, Joseph Ratzinger has consistently upheld the power of reason in all its fullness.

Those who write the histories of the twenty-first century will, I suspect, list an address delivered at a German university on this day ten years ago as one of this century’s most important speeches. In just 4,000 words, what we now call the “Regensburg Address” managed to identify the inner pathology that is corroding much of the world, how this malignancy emerged, and what can be done to address it.

The fact that it was the Roman Pontiff who showed how a collapse of faith in full-bodied conceptions of reason explains so much of our world’s evident disarray probably made Voltaire roll over in his grave.

But Benedict XVI’s analysis — which enraged many Muslims but also drew scorn from some secular and religious progressives — didn’t emerge from a vacuum. The need to defend an understanding of reason that goes beyond the natural and social sciences has long featured in Joseph Ratzinger’s writings.

For what is at stake, Ratzinger believes, is nothing less than humanity’s ability to know the truth. And if man is defined as not just the one who knows, but as the one who knows that he knows, any faltering in his confidence that human reason can know truth that is more than empirical not only leads to the dead ends of fideism or sentimentalism. It obliterates man’s very distinctiveness.

At the same time, recovering this confidence in reason has never, for Ratzinger, been about turning the clock back to a pre-Enlightenment world. In many ways, it’s about saving modernity from itself by opening its mind to the full grandeur of reason and, ultimately, the First Cause from which all else proceeds.

Given his reputation as a “conservative,” many people are surprised to learn that Ratzinger has never expressed hostility in principle to the Enlightenment. Ratzinger is certainly steeped in pre-modern sources such as the Scriptures. Nonetheless his mind is, in many ways, thoroughly modern.

Though his Regensburg commentary begins by analyzing correspondence between a medieval Byzantine emperor and his Persian interlocutor, the majority of Ratzinger’s writings on the crisis of reason take the various Enlightenments as their starting point.

In a 1998 essay entitled “Faith between Reason and Feeling,” Ratzinger begins by outlining a 1927 conversation among three future Nobel physicists: Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Paul Dirac. Their subject matter was Albert Einstein’s conception of God and the conviction of another Nobel physicist, Max Planck, that “there was no conflict between science and religion.”

According to Ratzinger, Heisenberg believed that the lack of conflict proceeded from a conviction that science was concerned with what is “true and false.” Religion, by contrast, was about “good and bad.” Science was “objective.” Religion was “subjective” — a matter of “taste,” as liberal Christianity’s Prussian progenitor, Friedrich Schleiermacher, put it.

Nevertheless, Ratzinger points out, Heisenberg expressed misgivings about whether humanity can survive such a division between “knowledge and faith.” In other words, the scientist — the Enlightenment figure par excellence — recognized that if “faith” primarily concerns subjective experiences and if “knowledge” is reduced to what is empirically verifiable, we have a major problem.

At this point, Ratzinger notes, Wolfgang Pauli interjected that such a division means that “things will happen that are more frightful than anything we can yet imagine.” In the tone of one who lived through it, Ratzinger comments that a few years after this conversation occurred, “the unholy twelve years would begin.” [Referring of course to the 12-year duration of what was to be the Nazis' Thousand-Year-Reich.]

At no point does Ratzinger’s analysis demean the empirical method or question the scientific enterprise’s nobility. “Reason,” he states, “that operates in specialized areas in fact gains enormously in strength and capability.”

Instead Ratzinger uses the ruminations of civilized, enlightened men to illustrate that once you reduce reason to these parameters, faith —but also philosophy and politics — collapses into emotivism and unreason. Welcome to the pseudo-religious madness of National Socialism and Marxism.

Likewise, science ceases to be guided by what is reasonable. Welcome to the efficient destruction of European Jewry, medical experiments on Catholic priests in Dachau, and the systematic use of terror by Communist regimes to destroy opponents.

In Ratzinger’s view, part of the problem is that many Enlightenment thinkers actually didn’t have enough faith in reason. Technical knowledge certainly matters. The natural and social sciences that acquired such traction in the eighteenth century have helped subsequent generations live longer and healthier lives. Thanks in part to Adam Smith, millions continue to be liberated from material poverty.

The problem, Ratzinger states, is that many who take pride in their reasonability “no longer offer any perspective on the fundamental questions of mankind.” Why? Because by themselves, scientific and economic reasoning can’t explain why, for instance, we should want to cure disease or reduce poverty.

The same critique, Ratzinger adds, applies to some people of faith. Having accepted reason’s reduction to the empirical, they “sought a new sphere for religion.” “That,” Ratzinger maintains, “is why ‘feeling’ was assigned to [religion] as its own domain within human existence.” One is reminded of Faust’s response to Gretchen’s question about the nature of religion: “Feeling is all. The rest is just smoke and mirrors.”

The effects of this turn have been catastrophic for Christianity, which has long valued reason. In some instances, it reduces religious faith to fideism: what Ratzinger once defined as “the desire to believe against reason.” Many Christians no longer consider it necessary to “always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15). Just feel and believe!

But having ceased proposing Christian faith’s reasonability, some believers also start making basic errors in logic and methodology. The historical-critical study of the Bible, for example, becomes understood as the truly scientific way of comprehending these texts.

Yet this method rules out, a priori, the notion that it is reasonable to believe in the truth of the miracles recorded in the Gospels if we recognize that a reasonable and loving God who is involved in human affairs may have good reasons to suspend the laws of nature in order to attest to truth.

Absent this reasonable supposition, Christ’s miracles are quickly interpreted as “metaphors,” despite the Gospels’ insistence that these were real events witnessed by real flesh-and-blood people and thus should not be understood as akin to Greek mythology.

This brings us to the third dimension of Ratzinger’s thinking on these matters. How can we reassert reason’s fullness in the realms of science and religion in an age in which emotions and empirical inquiry are widely viewed as the primary reference points for discussion?

Ratzinger’s first suggestion is that we must rehabilitate reason in the world bequeathed by the Enlightenment. Those working in the natural sciences, for example, should be reminded that their disciplines rest on a philosophical foundation.

“All our ideas about natural sciences and all practical applications,” Ratzinger writes, “are based on the assumption that the world is ordered according to rational, spiritual laws, [and] is imbued with rationality that can be traced out and copied by our reason.” Without this assumption, the scientific enterprise would never have gotten underway.

The same reasonable assumption raises the question of where this rationality came from in the first place. Answering that question might not take you immediately into the realm of the Scriptures, but it will lead you into natural theology.

As Ratzinger asked in a 1999 paper delivered at the Sorbonne, “can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of reason over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself?”

This attention to God as Logos is crucial to Ratzinger’s second recommendation. Religions that once took reason seriously need to do so again. On one level, that translates into a call for a renewal of natural law reasoning within these religious communities.

Yet this isn’t where the bulk of Ratzinger’s emphasis has fallen. Instead Ratzinger devotes more attention to stressing Christianity’s need to demonstrate that it is the reasonable faith that provides access to full knowledge of the truth.

Again, Ratzinger doesn’t dispense with the Enlightenment emphasis on reason. Instead, he responds to the classic challenge posed by the Age of Reason: to subject truth-claims to reason’s critical scrutiny.

Responding to that challenge, Ratzinger’s writings consistently take us through the Scriptures and Church Fathers to demonstrate that the God who reveals Himself to Abraham, and who Christians believe is fully revealed in the person of Christ, is truly the Logos. Here Ratzinger brings to bear his two favorite sources.

“According to Augustine and the biblical tradition,” Ratzinger writes, “Christianity is not based on mythical images and vague notions that are ultimately justified by their political usefulness; rather, it relates to that divine presence which can be perceived by the rational analysis of reality.”

This is what Christianity’s earliest adherents in the Roman Empire meant when they proclaimed their faith to be the religio vera: the religion of the truth first revealed to the Hebrews but now universalized for all as sure and liberating knowledge. Thus, Ratzinger says, “In Christianity, enlightenment has become part of religion and is no longer its opponent.”

It’s telling that in one of his last public addresses, in the midst of the chaos that engulfed his papacy in its final months, Ratzinger returned to these themes. Though visibly tired and clearly feeling his age, Ratzinger stated that he wanted “to reflect on the reasonableness of faith in God.”

Not only did Ratzinger reiterate the need to reject fideism, the type of faith that leads one to fly planes into buildings or cut the throat of an elderly priest, but he also underscored that reason confirms what revelation tells us to be true about God.

Echoing Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Ratzinger specified that “reason is able to know with certainty that God exists through the creation.” It is this confidence, Ratzinger says, that “unfolds the horizons” for scientific discovery.

None of this is to downplay the scale of the challenge that Joseph Ratzinger identified so dramatically ten years ago at Regensburg. It means knitting back together a world in which reason points to true faith. It also involves helping the natural and social sciences, so stimulated by the various Enlightenments, to recognize their need for grounding in those truths that provide them with their very rationale and prevent them from being turned against man himself.

It would be easy, even understandable, to leave such tasks to another generation — one perhaps less awash in sentimental humanitarianism and less speechless in the face of the violent fideism currently plaguing the earth. That, however, was not Ratzinger’s way.

To identify the pathologies of faith and reason that characterize the Muslim world and the West, he was willing to pay a high price in terms of rage from fideists and contempt from many who consider themselves enlightened.

The question we should ask ourselves is: are we willing to do the same?
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 17 settembre 2016 05:42
Forgive me for the time lag, but my home PC is out of commission, so I am having to do this post late at night in a hospital doctors' lounge...



So: As the ff spate of recent headlines show, many intelligent Catholics are still wasting time and effort 'wondering' whether
Jorge Mario Bergoglio favors Eucharistic leniency for unqualified remarried divorcees, i.e., allowing outright sacrilege when
people receive communion even if they are living in chronic adultery, which is a mortal sin...


Get over it, everyone! What more confirmation does anyone need if you have eyes to read, ears to hear, and common
sense to discern everything he has said and done so far regarding this matter?

1. Why does everyone seem to ignore that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, his policy was 'communion for everyone'? This was amply reported in the weeks after he was elected pope, but quietly dropped by apparent telepathic media consensus from all subsequent reports, especially in relation to the damned (literally) family synods that occupied this pontificate and media reporting about it for well over two years.

Apparently, he set no limitations on his leniency (he is, after all, the pope of infinite mercy), meaning Bergoglio gave the Eucharist freely not just to remarried divorcees living in adultery, but also to unmarried cohabiting couples and practising homosexuals, and in general, to any and all Massgoers who presented themselves for communion, whether they were in the required state of grace to partake of the Eucharist or not.

Of course, in this, he was merely practising what probably the overwhelmingly majority of priests around the world have been doing since the Novus Ordo came into effect - give communion to everyone, regardless! What makes it different in his case is that he did go on to become pope and is therefore now in a position to legislate for the universal Church his directive of communion for everyone in his archdiocese, a directive which was probably never written down, out of sheer prudence, as are so many of what have become hard-and-fast habits of of liturgical abuse in the Novus Ordo.

Because all popes before him specifically reiterated the communion ban for people considered adulterers by the Church under Jesus's own definition of adultery, and equally important, because he failed to get the two 'family synods' he convoked to support him on this, he had to work it into AL as best he could by casuistry, circumvention and circumlocution - and the blatant omission from AL of any reference to the communion ban reiterated by his two predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI - he could not very well write directly in AL that yes, unqualified remarried divorcees can be allowed to receive communion, other than by indirection in a footnote or two, but he does goes on to give two ridiculous conditions for such largesse:
1) that the priest or bishop, 'discerning' with the concerned couple, can agree with them that they ought to receive communion; and
2) that some of these adulterous couples may actually be in a state of grace (how, we are not told, unless it is by Bergoglian redefinition of 'state of grace' to mean anything you, the sinner, and/or your priest considers a state of grace, even as you persist in a state of chronic mortal sin).

If you think all that is dishonest and certainly most unworthy and unseemly in the supposed Vicar of Christ on earth, everything about this exercise has been dishonest from the start.

2. When JMB first announced in July 2013 that he was convoking a 'synod on the family', it was in response to a question during his first inflight news conference ever, of what he intended to do about communion for remarried divorcees. Probably a planted question, because of all the grave crises facing the Church in our time, the 'suffering' of RCDs unable to receive communion is hardly a priority.
He must have been thinking of such a synod from the moment he became pope - with his instinct for exploiting anything the media will treat with high priority, and communion for RCDs is one of those really marginal concerns to which somehow, the liberal German bishops above all have managed to give a high profile all these decades since Vatican II.

3. So, didn't any alarm bells go off when he handpicked Cardinal Kasper of the abovementioned German bishops to keynote the first family synod by delivering a position paper to the secret consistory (secret only because no media were allowed in the closed-door session) of cardinals in February 2014? A paper immediately disputed on the floor by a number of cardinals, but which this pope praised in glowing terms, at the end of the consistory, as 'theology on bended knees' [forced down to its knees in abject submission to his human will, more like], though it proposed leniencies in Church discipline on the sacraments of matrimony and the Eucharist (and necessarily, penance).

4. We do not have to revisit the scandalous machinations that began with the preparations for the first of the 2 Bergoglian family synods, in which his handpicked chief executive at the Bishops' Synod Secretariat, Cardinal Baldisseri, declared to the world that JPII's Familiaris consortio from 1981 was 33 years too old and needed to be updated, and sent out a survey questionnaire to the bishops of the world with leading questions about their parishioners' attitudes towards remarried divorcees, homosexual practices and common-law partnerships.

It went on to the outrageous mid-term relatio in which one of the Bergoglio myrmidons, Mons. Bruno Forte, tried to palm off a couple of paragraphs in favor of homosexuals even if the topic had hardly been discussed by the fathers, much less viewed with the approbation Forte indicated.

The Synodal fathers rightly rebelled against this fabrication, and in the voting for recommendations to make up the final Relation voted down three paragraphs introduced by the Bergoglio-Kasper myrmidons about their favorite 3 categories of 'chronic sinners' singled out for sacramental leniency. Which meant these topics would not be on the agenda of the second synod in 2015.

Until, using his papal prerogatives, JMB restored those paragraphs to the final document and therefore to the agenda of the 2015 synod - and of course, he would and did, otherwise he would have called the synods in vain, and would be unable to legislate his 'communion for everyone' in the universal Church.

5. And the second Bergoglian synod came to pass, with more of the same blatant machinations to get the synodal fathers to vote as the pope wanted them to do. Again they did not, but made the fatal inexplicable mistake of agreeing to leave out John Paul II's specific reiteration of the communion ban for RCDs, while quoting the rest of FC 84 in the final document.

This, of course, provided JMB with the ostensible pretext not to reaffirm JPII's communion ban in his own post-synodal exhortation, the now signally infamous Amoris laetitia condemned by many of the best Catholic minds as heretical in parts and all the various degrees of censure for several other parts - as no papal document has been condemned since Honorius, the first pope declared heretical by the Church.

Of course, it's to each his own definition of what constitutes heresy and whether anything in AL is 'technically heretical' by canonical definition - even if it sounds 'obviously heretical' by commonsense measures. But the Catholic world, and especially, the Catholic hierarchy, in general, is loath to even think a pope could be heretical, much less to say so. So, for now, it is completely a matter of individual opinion - and conscience.

6. In short, nothing JMB has said or done in the past three years and 47 days since he first announced he was calling a 'family synod' has indicated in any way that he has any intention of backing down from allowing 'communion for everyone' - starting with the RCDs - in the universal Church. Even if he tries to give it a semblance of collegiality by leaving it up to the diocesan bishops to interpret AL and its casuistically disguised sacramental leniency. [Which, of course, also implements one of the most controversial and ecclesiastically disastrous points in his pontifical agenda as announce in Evangelii gaudium - giving bishops doctrinal autonomy, making each one a mini-pope, with the potential of having two contiguous dioceses profess divergent doctrines on the same subject. This is a point most commentators appear to have overlooked, if not forgotten, in their focus on the virtual abandonment of the communion ban on RCDs by JMB.]

Still, the Sturm und Drang over AL has resumed because of the Bergoglio letter and the Argentine bishops' directive that prompted it. Here are some of the reactions...

Ipse dixit!
AL must be interpreted
as Francis says
Translated from

Sept. 12, 2016

My note:'Ipse dixit' literally means 'he/she himself said it', but it has long been used in the English language "to identify and describe a sort of arbitrary dogmatic statement, which the speaker expects the listener to accept as valid"

After reports and previews on many sites, even the para-official Vatican website Il Sismografo published on Sept. 11 the integral texts of both the letter-directive of the bishops of the Buneos Aires region to their priests and Pope Francis's letter comment on it, thus confirming their authenticity. [I don't know why there should have been any question about this, since the photo-reproductions of both texts bore absolutely no signs to suspect they were not at all authentic!]

The Argentine bishops' directive was intended to provide guidelines to priests for applying the controversial Chapter 8 of AL regarding communion for remarried divorcees.

In the fifth and sixth points of the ten instructions they articulated concede that such RCDs can be given absolution and sacramental communion even when they "fail to maintain" the condition of living in sexual continence.

Thus far, nothing really 'new'. Because one cannot count the bishops and cardinals who already interpret AL in this sense, even as many others do not see such an 'opening' formulated with clarity in AL.

But this time, the pope himself has taken a stand - and says the Argentine directives constitute the only correct interpretation of his text: "The document is very good and expresses perfectly the sense of Chapter 8 of AL. There are no other interpretations. And I am sure that this [interpretation] will produce much good".

Curiously, however, on the same day that "Il sismografo" published JMB's letter, L'Osservatore Romano published the commentary by a Spanish cardinal (an octogenarian made cardinal by JMB to validate his professed love for the Spaniard's progressivist Vatican II theology), who had a more restrictive interpretation of AL Chapter 8:

His name is Fernando Sebastián Aguilar, 86, former bishop of Pamplona, and a member of the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary missionary order. He says that the pope " is concerned about many Christians who have made a new life [in second or subsequent 'marriages'], and in the twilight of their live, wish to be reconciled with God and with the Church". [It's the first time I have read anyone attributing the zeal to lift the communion ban as concern for RCDs who are nearing the end of their lives. All along the argument - especially by the German bishops - has been for those RCDs in the prime of life who are 'suffering' from being unable to receive communion.]

The cardinal fails to be more explicit. But he seems to concede allowing absolution and communion for those who are already advanced in age when they can more easily observe the condition - reiterated by John Paul II -of living together as brother and sister.

Sebastián Aguilar was made a cardinal by Pope Francis, who says that for some time, he hasd been a fervent reader of his books to the point of declaring himself as Sebastian Aguilar's 'alumnus'. he cardinal is a known progressivist. In his younger days, he was the vavorite theologian of Cardinal Tarancon, who was the icon of Vatican II Catholicism in Spain.

But he is also a very frank and direct man. He made news when, shortly after he was named cardinal, he gave an interview in which he said homosexuals must be respected but homosexuality must be condemned.

Sebastian Aguilar also wrote the Preface to the essay published in Spain by Cardinal Gerhard Mueller who expressed direct opposition to the Kasper proposal [really the Bergoglio-Kasper proposal].

Back to the pope's letter on the Argentine bishops' directive re AL implementation, it must be noted that more and more dioceses are offering guidelines for the interpretaiton of the most controversial points in AL.

In Italy, for example, the Bishop of Parma, Enrico Solmi, who was president of the Italian bishops' commission for family and life, and who took part in both Bergoglian family synods, told Avvenire that it was time to subject AL to 'the official reflection of the Church in Italy and make it the topic of a bishops' assembly [or diocesan synod, a step already planned by a diocese in Australia and by the diocese of San Diego in the USA]. When asked whether it was necessary to issue implementing guidelines, he said:"Yes, I think we should think about it".

On the same page in Avvenire, don Paolo Gentili, director of the CEI pffice for pastoral ministry of the family, listed a series of intensive initiatives and encounters already in the works in order to implement AL [by which they all mean really the only substantive point of AL as far as they and the pope are concerned - allow RCDs to receive communion virtually at their own discretion (with nominal 'discernment' from their priest or bishop). What a farce! Farce it may be, but it means what JMB wanted, he is getting.]

Meanwhile, Cardinal Caffarra is still awaiting a response from the pope on his questions about the questioned points of AL as articulated by JMB's designated surrogate for this purpose, Cardinal Schoenborn.

Or perhaps the answer has already arrived. Not to him though but o the bishops of Argentina.

POST SCRIPTUM - In Argentina, it is being said that the bishops' directive has not been finalized and that it is being rewritten. [Would any such changes reflect the original report that Cardinal Poli of Buenos Aires, JMB's handpicked successor for his former post, and one other bishop had insisted to their colleagues that communion cannot be allowed to RCDs who do not commit to living chastely as canon law requires before absolution and communion can be allowed?]

But the OR on Sept. 12 already solemnly pronounced the directive as if it were the definitive document, citing ample passages from it, and most especially, the pope's letter of enthusiastic approval. [So, fat chance that directive will be altered at all!]

Canonist Ed Peters had this to say:

On the Buenos Aires directive

September 13, 2016

Canon 915, the modern (yet resting on ancient roots) norm that prohibits ministers of holy Communion from giving that sacrament to Catholics who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin” does not expressly name divorced Catholics living in their second (or third, or fourth, or fifth…) ‘marriages’ as examples of persons ineligible for holy Communion, but they have long been the ‘go-to’ example of those covered by the canon.

Even its harshest critics generally conceded that Canon 915 applies to divorced-and-remarried Catholics (but that)the emotional hardships associated with such cases is, in some critics’ minds, a good argument for abandoning the norm.

Now, in his unequivocal endorsement (“There are no other interpretations possible” [!]) of a leaked draft of some Argentine bishops’ plan for implementing AL, Pope Francis has neither ‘abrogated’ Canon 915 nor ‘interpreted’ it out of existence (both being the sort of technical operations the pope shows little interest in). Nevertheless, his action will likely make it harder for Catholic ministers, who remain bound by canon law even in stressful cases, to observe Canon 915 at the practical level.

Basically, the Argentine draft (assuming it is still a ‘draft’) directs ministers of holy Communion (chiefly parish priests) to work through concrete cases impacting access to at least three sacraments (Matrimony, Penance, and the Eucharist), guided not by the Church’s accumulated pastoral wisdom as summed up in norms like Canon 915 (which seem not even not to be mentioned!), but instead by a line of endlessly malleable considerations phrased in verbiage redolent of the 1970s.

If some pastors after the publication AL were already being told by irate parishioners that ‘Pope Francis says you have to give me Communion’, what might they expect in the wake of his sweeping approval of this Argentine interpretation?

Fundamentally the Argentine draft stumbles, I suggest, in the same way as does AL, namely, in thinking that an individual’s subjective, albeit sincere, conclusions about his or her eligibility for Communion per Canon 916 trumps the Church’s authority, nay her obligation, to withhold the sacrament in the face of certain objective, externally verifiable conditions per Canon 915.

I shall not rehash that argument here, but we should be clear: Compromising the well-established interpretation of Canon 915 in the case of divorced-and-remarried Catholics necessarily calls into question the law’s applicability to cases of, say, ‘loving’ couples cohabitating outside of marriage, the ‘compassionate’ promotion of abortion or euthanasia, ‘honest’ persons entering “same-sex marriages”, and so on.

Where from here?
1. It is hard to see how the Argentine bishops can tone down a document that Francis has already warmly endorsed, but, who knows? Maybe they might “clarify” it in some way that lets Rome in turn “clarify” its endorsement. [Hah! It will snow in hell before that happens!]

2. The Argentine document itself has some supposedly restricting language which might be invoked, but frankly, I don’t think that will be much help to pastors. Consider, for example, the requirement that one must, among other things, be “unable” to obtain a declaration of nullity before being allowed holy Communion.

But think about this — what if one is “unable” to obtain an annulment precisely because there is no proof of nullity? Does losing one’s bid for a declaration of nullity suddenly make one eligible for holy Communion despite remarriage?

Most of the rest of the allegedly cautionary language, such as that to “avoid understanding this possibility as an unrestricted access to the sacraments”, is platitudinous — no one seriously thinks that the Church approves “unrestricted access to the sacraments” [You think not? The current nominal leader of the Church apparently thinks so - think 'communion for everyone' in Buenos Aires] so an admonition against such access is pointless.

3. As hard as it might be to follow, my basic advice to ministers of holy Communion in the context of divorced-and-remarried Catholics is to ignore the coming furor over the pope’s endorsement of an ambiguously worded document from some local bishops, and just follow the law of the Church, which is quite clear, unless and until that law is formally changed, at which point (if it comes to that) we will sit down and figure out what the new law directs.

Many remarked on the use of the adjective 'bizarre' by Robert Royal in the following commentary - but surely it cannot be more bizarre than JMB's looming apotheosis or virtual canonization of arch-heretic Martin Luther who spearheaded the second Great Schism from the one true Church!

A bizarre papal move
Robert Royal

Sept. 14, 2016

So now we know. We knew before, really, but didn’t have explicit confirmation. The long, agonizing slog, however, is finally over: from Pope Francis’s invitation to Cardinal Kasper to address the bishops in Rome in February of 2014 to the pope’s letter last week to some Argentinean bishops affirming guidelines they had developed in a joint document that, in “exceptional cases,” people divorced and remarried (living in an “adulterous” relationship as we believed for 2000 years in Western Christianity), may receive Holy Communion. This whole affair is bizarre. No other word will do.

As I wrote on this page many times before the two Synods on the Family, daily during those events, and subsequently, it was clear – at least to me – that the pope wanted his brother bishops to approve some form of what came to be known as the Kasper Proposal.

That he did not get such approval – indeed, that he got significant pushback from bishops from various parts of the globe – visibly angered him, and even led him into a bit of snark at the close of the second Synod, that some opinions had “at times” been expressed there, “unfortunately, not in entirely well-meaning ways.”

Well, one man’s not entirely well-meaning ways is another’s conviction about remaining faithful to the words of Jesus. And since then and even after the publication of Amoris laetitia, Catholics – indeed, the whole world – have been embroiled in tumultuous and fruitless speculation on whether things had changed or not. Even the notorious footnote 351 of AL, for all the worries it caused traditional Catholics, did not really come out and say what the pope evidently thought.

The puzzlement was understandable. Has a pope ever changed something of such significance via confused footnotes and, now, a private letter to a small group of regional bishops? In that obscure context, he’s quite categorical: “The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.”

I say again: bizarre – both in process and substance. It took several days before it was even certain that the letter to the Argentinean bishops – leaked, only later confirmed by the Vatican – was authentic.

Pope Francis has no trouble making bald public statements such as “who am I to judge,” and “if you don’t recycle, go to Confession.” He rails, often rightly, against careerism and gossip and division within the Curia, but suddenly becomes gun-shy when it comes to marriage and family? [Not gunshy, but playing his semantic cards scrupulously ambiguous enough semantically so he cannot be accused of outright heresy, even if few persons in their right mind have any doubt at all of what he is doing oh-so-calculatedly-casuistically!]

As Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdö said frankly during the Synods, it all just comes down to a choice: either you give a certain group of people Communion or you don’t.

Even now that Francis has said yes, we keep hearing that there are qualifications and nuances and limits. The pope has several times refused to comment on the change in order, as he’s said, to avoid giving “a simplistic answer.”

But quite apart from the fact that he’s done so on many other matters, he at least appears to believe that it will be possible in practice to finesse this process, through accompaniment, discernment, all those words that have no clear limits [and are quintessentially hypocritical and dishonest].

The Argentine bishops themselves have warned that the change applies only to exceptional cases: “it’s necessary to avoid understanding this possibility as an unrestricted access to the sacraments, or as though any situation might justify it.”

But while they’ve recognized the danger, they haven’t avoided it. In the world today, everyone thinks he’s a special case, and pity the poor parish priest or local bishop in the future who seems “too rigid” by not granting enough people special status.

A Catholic has a right to ask for a little accompaniment and discernment of his own about what the Church teaches – particularly which principles define that “exceptional status.”

To take a case that will not long remain hypothetical: what about the gay couple who are committed to one another and experienced same-sex attraction their whole lives, through no fault of their own? When the first Synod started down that path, it was regarded as extremist and quickly abandoned by the small number of bishops who wanted to push it. But without some clear principles to distinguish such cases from others, why not? [Clearly, that's the next great frontier that JMB aims to breach. Mons. Forte gave us a preview in his interjection of his (and presumably JMB's) personal views about how to deal with practising Catholic homosexuals in that infamous midterm relatio of the first synod.]

In the Church’s 2000-year history – a history of apostles, martyrs, confessors, great saints, brilliant doctors, profound mystics – none thought this new teaching [about 'exceptional cases' in the discipline of sacraments] Catholic. Some even died to defend the indissolubility of marriage.

For a pope to criticize those who remain faithful to that tradition, and characterize them as somehow unmerciful and as aligning themselves with hard-hearted Pharisees against the merciful Jesus is bizarre.

I’ve lived long enough in Washington and spent sufficient time in Rome not to trust what a journalist says some leader – secular or religious – told him in private. But I’m convinced that when Eugenio Scalfari – the eccentric editor of La Repubblica, the socialist paper in Rome the pope reads daily – said that Francis told him he would allow all who come to receive Communion, he may not have gotten the words exactly right. But he caught the drift. [Scalfari may have taken liberties in attributing direct quotations to JMB but his paraphrases have all hit the mark - presenting the unvarnished Bergoglian thinking in all its self-indulgent narcissistic rawness and its utter barbarousness vis-a-vis Catholicism. It takes another narcissist-barbarian to know one.]

Indeed, Catholics have a new teaching now, not only on divorce and remarriage. We have a new vision of the Eucharist. It’s worth recalling that in January the pope, coyly, not ruling it out, suggested to a group of Lutherans in Rome that they, too, should “talk with the Lord” and “go forward.” Indeed, they later took Communion at Mass in the Vatican. In a way, that was even more significant.

A Catholic couple, divorced and remarried, are sinners, but – at least in principle – still Catholic. Has intercommunion with non-Catholic Christians also been decided now without any consultation – almost as if such a momentous step in understanding the Sacrament of Unity hardly matters?

I say this in sorrow, but I’m afraid that the rest of this papacy is now going to be rent by bands of dissenters, charges of papal heresy, threats of – and perhaps outright – schism. Lord, have mercy.

[Well, let us be clear about the schism part. It's not us orthodox Catholics who will split from our Church - it's JMB and his fellow all-religions-are-alike enthusiasts who ought to break off (and though I may be alone in insisting on this, JMB has already broken off from the one true Church in relentlessly pushing forward the principles and practices of the church of Bergoglio under cover of the Catholic Church).]
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 18 settembre 2016 01:39



By way of pre-emptive rejoinder to Phil Lawler's commentary below, which applies only if you believe that the magisterium of JMB is that
of the Catholic Church, or of a genuine Catholic pope, for that matter:You heard the man! Never one to hide his 'light' under a
bushel, he's telling us that everything he says - nay, everything he thinks - is 'Magisterium', his Magisterium. How then can he
possibly subvert his own magisterium (both in the sense of teaching authority, as well as the content of his teaching) when everything
he thinks and articulates, orally or in the written word, is that very magisterium which he builds on and consolidates daily as the
magisterium of the church of Bergoglio, though he passes it off as that of the Catholic Church?


Is Pope Francis deliberately
subverting papal teaching authority?
By Phil Lawler

Sept. 15, 2016

Today the greatest threat to the teaching authority of the Pope is the Pope himself.

Pope Francis specializes in unsettling remarks-- most frequently, it seems, during in-flight interviews. But the responsibility of the Roman Pontiff is to settle questions: something that Pope Francis seems reluctant to do. ['Reluctant'? No! but ostensibly loath to do so when it concerns bimillennial Catholic teaching and practice, thereby his relentless equivocations in this regard, while quick to affirm his ill-informed, singleminded advocacy of dominant secular thinking about climate change, the economy, political correctness ueber alles on anything having to do with Islam, religious indifferentism, and indiscriminate acceptance of mass migrations.]

Now another informal statement-- addressing a pressing question, but without giving an authoritative answer-- makes me question whether the Holy Father is deliberately undermining his own teaching office.

Robert Royal has persuasively explained why he regards the latest Vatican surprise as “A Bizarre Papal Move.” For more than two years, the Catholic world has been debating the “Kasper proposal” that divorced and remarried Catholics might sometimes be admitted to Communion, and until this week there has been no clear, definitive answer to that question. Now at last that answer has emerged: not in a formal document or public statement, but in a leaked private letter that was belatedly confirmed as authentic.

As Royal remarks, both before and during the two meetings of the Synod of Bishops on the family, Pope Francis gave every indication that he wanted the bishops to endorse the Kasper proposal. They did not. Nevertheless, their final statement was ambiguous enough so that the Pope himself, in his apostolic exhortation concluding the Synod’s work, could have taken the plunge. He did not. Amoris Laetitia avoided giving a direct answer to the question that everyone was asking.

Why this silence, on an issue that was clearly so important to the Pontiff? All during the Synod meetings, reporters had bombarded Vatican officials with the same question: Would the Church change her policy regarding the reception of Communion by divorced/remarried Catholics? (This obsessive focus on the topic was itself bizarre, in light of the many more immediate threats to family life.)

Yet AL addressed the question only indirectly, inconclusively. The key to discerning the Pope’s true intentions, readers generally agreed, was lodged in an obscure footnote — a footnote that the Pontiff himself, in another airplane interview, said he could not clearly recall! [A papal white lie, but a lie, nevertheless, that begs disbelief!]

Yet now, blithely ignoring the confusion that he has created, Pope Francis announces that his intent is quite clear, that it is accurately conveyed in a document by a group of Argentine bishops, and that “there can be no other interpretation.”

And he makes this remarkable announcement in a letter that was leaked to the press (by whom?), so that reporters were scrambling to verify the papal letterhead, until Vatican Radio finally confirmed that the letter was authentic. Wouldn’t it have been more sensible, on an issue of such public interest, to resolve the question with a formal statement from the Vatican press office?

Yet Pope Francis had deliberately avoided putting any such statement on the record. Just a few months ago, responding to the same old question from reporters during an in-flight interview, he declined to give a direct answer. Vatican-watcher Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa recalls:
He was asked whether there were any real new possibilities for access to the sacraments that did not exist prior to the publication of the “Amoris Laetitia” encyclical. “I could say “yes” and leave it at that”, Francis had replied. “But that would be too brief a response. I recommend that all of you read the presentation made by Cardinal Schönborn, a great theologian.”
(Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who is indeed a distinguished theologian, had suggested that the Kasper proposal had been accepted. But there was some ambiguity in the Austrian cardinal’s statement, too. More importantly, Cardinal Schönborn is not the Pope; his interpretation of a papal statement does not carry the same authority as the statement itself.)

As my colleague Jeff Mirus has pointed out, the leaked letter from Pope Francis also does not carry the same authority as a papal statement. A private letter is not a formal pronouncement: not an exercise of the Pope’s teaching office. [Not as far as this pope is concerned. See the quotation in the banner to this post! Everytime he opens his mouth or commits something to paper, that's Bergoglian magisterium, and no, it ought not to concern Catholics at all because any time what he says or writes diverges from Church teaching, then he is exercising a Bergoglian magisterium, not Catholic.]

And it seems clear the Pope Francis did not want to use his magisterial authority to settle the question, since he had passed up several opportunities to do so.

If he had stated clearly, in a formal document, that divorced and remarried Catholics might receive Communion, Pope Francis would have been ignoring the strong resistance that he had encountered at the Synod, and thus undermining his claim to be speaking on behalf of the world’s bishops.

He would also have been contradicting the teaching of St. John Paul II, who was quite clear in stating, in Familiaris Consortio (#84), that divorced and remarried Catholics must live as brothers and sisters if they wish to approach the Eucharist, because "if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage." The logic of that magisterial statement is compelling.

And if Pope Francis reversed the policy set by Pope John Paul II, it would seem clear that a future Pontiff could reverse the policy set by Pope Francis, so that no papal statement would be regarded as conclusive.

Instead, as Royal observes, Pope Francis has chosen to “finesse this process, through accompaniment, discernment, all those words that have no clear limits.” He says that the matter is clear, but does not provide clarity.

With his approval, the Argentine bishops say that divorced/remarried Catholics may receive Communion under certain limited circumstances, but do not specify what those circumstances might be. Everything is left to the discretion of the pastor; the guidance from Rome is that there will be no guidance.

What does this mean, in practical pastoral terms? Virtually every divorced and remarried Catholic will argue that his case falls into that special category — whatever it is — and he should be allowed to receive the Eucharist. If his pastor disagrees, he will probably move on to another parish, until he finds a pastor who accepts his argument.

Is that the Pope’s intent: to leave every parish priest free to make his own interpretations of Church teaching? He has spoken frequently about decentralization of Church authority; does he really mean to go that far? [Dear Mr. Lawler, go back to Evangelii gaudium, that manifestly clear manifesto-agenda of the Bergoglian Pontificate published in November 2013 about such intentions (even if in the document, it is the diocesan bishops whom he would endow with doctrinal autonomy. In which a practical consequence, for example, would be that a conservative Polish diocese upholds and enforces the commmunion ban, while the German diocese next to it merrily gives commmunion to everyone.)]

The Pope has playfully encouraged young Catholics to “make a mess;” is he trying to set an example, to deconstruct the teaching office?
[Ah yes, the famous slogan, "Haga lio!". That wasn't playful at all - he has repeated it on other occasions to groups of priests and bishops. It wasn't meant specifically to deconstruct the teaching office of the pope, but to encourage a perpetual state of questioning about the life of the Church, starting, unfortunately with its very fundamentals of doctrine and discipline.]

The Code of Canon Law (#915) puts priests under a solemn obligation to avoid scandal by withholding the Eucharist from those who persist in manifest grave sin. An adulterous relationship is a condition of manifest grave sin. Yet now the Argentine bishops appear to say — again, with papal approval — that in some circumstances priests should administer Communion to people who are living in objectively adulterous relationships.

Has Canon #915 been amended or abrogated, then? No, it has not. Pope Francis is the supreme legislator of the Church; he has the unquestioned power to modify canon law. But he has chosen not to do so; again he has deliberately avoided the use of his authority.

Again the net effect is to convey the impression that formal Church teachings and laws do not really matter, that they can safely be ignored.

Unfortunately this “bizarre papal move” is not an isolated case. The most memorable statements of this pontificate have been made off the cuff, during airplane interviews, rather than in written documents and prepared statements.

How many times have Vatican officials been forced to "clarify" a shocking papal statement, to explain away an apparent contradiction? Again and again Pope Francis has spread confusion among the faithful. But never before has it been quite so evident that he deliberately sought ambiguity, to avoid the proper use of his teaching office-- which is to resolve questions and to unify the brethren.

If the Pope’s conscious intention is to diminish the authority of the papal magisterium, he is succeeding. If that is not his intention, I am at a loss to explain him. [One can avoid this false dilemma by simply refusing to equate Bergoglian 'magisterium' with the Catholic Magisterium. JMB is not seeking to diminish the 'papal teaching authority' at all - on the contrary, he has broadened its scope considerably, insofar as he exercises it, to include every personal opinion he makes known. Fine, let his Bergoglians heed him to the letter, but that doesn't make them or JMB Catholic rather than Bergoglian. (Again, I use 'Bergoglian' here the way historians use 'Lutheran' to refer to Luther's followers, to the doctrine/discipline Luther devised for the 'Reformed Church', and to that 'church' itself..]
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 18 settembre 2016 04:25


I don't agree with everything Antonio Socci writes, and I truly resent his conspiracy theory about Benedict XVI's resignation, but allowing for such
quirks, his commentary always makes for interesting reading, if only because he is merciless in his systematic denunciations of JMB, much of it justified...

The pope's 'hot autumn'
Translated from

September 15, 2016

Autumn promises to be a hot season for Papa Bergoglio. Above all for the series of political setbacks that continue to box him in, this most political of modern popes: the electoral collapse of Angela Merkel in Germany is a direct consequence of her indiscriminate immigration policy that has been obsessively sponsored by Bergoglio.

Moreover, all over Europe, public opinion has been mounting against the uncontrolled 'invasion' by overwhelmingly Muslim migrants endorsed by the Argentine pope (Consider the success of the Brexit initiative, the Wall of Calais, recent elections in Austria and even in Catholic Croatia where the center-left party barely eked out a victory).

The most recent of these 'unpleasant' developments for Bergoglio's secular politicking is the apparent crippling of Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, which must preoccupy this pope after his grandstanding criticism of Trump for his position on immigration in order to put him at a disadvantage (even if his Democratic opponent is a fanatic secularist).

Earlier this year, the pope from South America had to live with the defeat of his candidate for the Argentine presidency at the hands of Mauricio Macri, a center-right politician, who is persona non grata to Bergoglio. Not to mention the fall from power of his great friends in the Brazilian left, former President Lula and recently impeached President Dilma Rousssef.

Even the attempt to stipulate an agreement with the Communist Chinese regime (an agreement that would be a further blow to the clandestine bishops and persecuted Christians of the underground Church in China) seems to be increasingly difficult to finalize, although this pope has already signed embarrassing statements legitimizing the Chinese Communist dictatorship and of its crimes [past and present, including the millions of Chinese killed in the various 'great leaps forward' and 'cultural revolutions' that have marked the history of Communist China].

And, in fact, for his forthcoming 'Thirst for Peace' inter-religious summit in Assisi on Sept. 20, he appears to have allowed Beijing to dictate to the Vatican not to invite the Dalai Lama to the event.

Internally at the Vatican itself, despite the climate of fear Bergoglio has established, there has been much polemic about the letter he sent recently to an Argentine bishop in which he states that the only correct interpretation of Amoris laetitia - [specifically of its highly dubious Chapter 8 which may be heretical in parts] - is the 'ultramodernist' one, i.e., "that which, in effect, incites adultery and the profanation of the sacraments", as an opposition prelate puts it.

It is the first time in history that a pope puts his signature on a document that overturns moral law.

But to sweep aside the bimillennial teaching of the Church against adultery which is based on Jesus's own words has enormous consequences in the life of Christians and directly raises a question over Bergoglio's orthodoxy - a doubt expressed in a Newsweek cover story months ago that posed the once-merely-rhetorical question "Is the pope Catholic?' about Bergoglio.

To demolish the sacraments - in Catholic thinking - means to demolish the Catholic Church herself. But the present Bishop of Rome is carrying out such a strategy in diverse ways: from the progressive replacement of the Catholic hierarchy (it seems a forthcoming consistory will create a whole platoon of Bergoglian cardinals thereby mortgaging the foreseeable future of the Church) to his continuing hatchet jobs on various pillars of Catholic doctrine.

Already in the works - even if seemingly dissembled - are blows against the priesthood (from admitting women to the diaconate, to doing away with priestly celibacy).

But the principal objective remains the Eucharist itself, in the context of the progressivist project (ongoing since Vatican II) to protestantize the Catholic Church, dear to the hearts of a political axis extending from Obama's USA to Germany and Northern Europe - a plan directly opposed by Benedict XVI and probably one of the reasons why he was 'accompanied to the door' in his resignation. [There we go again, with Socci's conspiracy theory - but who, exactly, would these groups and/or individuals be who, one assumes from Socci's hypothesis, were powerful enough to compel a pope to resign and yet remain so hidden and unidentified???? Not even a clue as to who 'they' might be, other than the Freemasons who are always among the prime suspects in any anti-Church conspiracy.]

The rip will be consummated on October 31 with Bergoglio's visit to Sweden to 'celebrate' the 500th anniversary of Luther's schism.

A papal decision that contrasts with the obstinate refusal of the Bishop of Rome to take part in Italy's National Eucharistic Congress this month in Genoa (becoming the first post-Vatican II pope - and ex officio Primate of Italy - not to take part in this big ecclesial event which occurs only every four years). Yet he is taking part enthusiastically in celebrating the most devastating heretic yet produced in the history of the Church.

That event may mark an 'irreparable' decision - if this pope formally approves inter-communion between Catholics and Lutherans [who do not believe in the Trans-substantiation].

It would be the de facto abolition of the Catholic doctrine of the Trans-substantiation, and in effect, the abolition of the Eucharist. It must be remembered that last June 28, in Benedict XVI's first words pronounced in public since his retirement, he introduced the concept of trans-substantiation as if to warn of the imminent danger...

Intercommunion between Catholics and Lutherans would mean equiparation of the Eucharist to the normal bread in Lutheran communion which is simply thought of as a 'meal'. It would be a catastrophe for the Church.

And what are the indications in this direction?
First, the surprising words said by Bergoglio on November 15, 2015, in a visit to the Lutheran Church of Rome.

Followed by the interpretation of those words as favoring intercommunion by the semi-official Bergoglian house organ, La Civilta Cattolica.

Then a few days ago, at Casa Santa Marta, Bergoglio pronounced a homily which could be his typical preventive artillery barrage with which he usually launches his demolition operations (same tactics and strategy he used for preparing the way to lifting the communion ban on RCDs).

In fact, he set forth a chain of incoherent images, as he does every time he wishes to attack those who oppose his 'revolution'. At the end of that confused discourse, one gleaned the following: Let us prevent the devil from destroying the Church with divisions, especially regarding "the very root of Church unity, which is the Body of Christ, the Eucharist".

In itself, this concept is normal and right, if it had not been turned upside down: the 'dividers' against whom Bergoglio has started to vent would be those Catholic bishops who insist that the Eucharist (true Body and Blood of Christ) cannot be compared to the bread used in the Lutheran 'supper'.

Knowing Bergoglio's usual modus operandi, one might predict that this apparent Bergoglian apologia pro Eucarestia will be the argument he will adopt for his final assault on the Eucharist itself (because he has already used similarly incredible dialectical artifices in AL in which he ends up exhorting RCDs to continue conjugal relations - and therefore continue living in adultery - for the good of their children).

Actually, the only true and devastating division caused in the Church over the Eucharist was consummated 500 years ago by Martin Luther himself, whom Bergoglio is well on the way to apotheosizing. Here is what Luther said of the Holy Mass:
I declare that all the brothels, homicides, robberies, assassinations and adulteries are far less evil than the abomination that is the papist Mass... When the Mass is destroyed, I think we will have ruined all of papism along with it. Indeed, papism depends on the Mass as if it was a rock, all of it [Catholicism] with its convents, bishoprics, colleges, altars, ministers and doctrines - in one word, with all its gut. All of these will necessarily collapse when their sacrilegious and abominable Mass collapses.

So if Bergoglio would be consistent with what he said the other day, if he really wishes to protect the Eucharist, then instead of going off to Sweden to legitimize Luther and his doctrines, he should tell Protestants that interfaith Communion is not possible, and that the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ.

And then he must retract AL which in fact legitimizes the profanation of the Eucharist itself.

But he's not going to do any of that and will go his own way, which is strongly sponsored by international powers. Those who are the great supporters of this Pontificate and the great enemies of Benedict XVI who supposedly resigned. [I wish Socci would identify who and what these powers are! It violates a basic rule of journalism not to identify the supposed culprits when one is making accusations.]

Nonetheless, it is always possible that the authentic Catholic part of the Church will rebel (important intellectuals who were close to the two previous popes have written that the signal has been passed on) and there will be possible disarray in the Bergoglian Pontificate if the Obama-Clinton bloc which is among this pope's sponsors will not be in power after the November elections.




P.S. I had to laugh when I saw this story and its headlines. Didn't he realize he was talking about himself? Obviously not!


Pope Francis met 154 recently appointed bishops from around the world. They were attending a week-long seminar in Rome for new bishops.

In a nearly 40-minute prepared talk, the Pope warned new bishops against using their office to be self-serving, but rather to share the holiness, truth and love of God.

“The world is tired of lying spellbinders and, allow me to say, ‘trendy’ priests or bishops. The people sniff them out – they have God’s sense of smell – and they walk away when they recognise narcissists, manipulators, defenders of their own causes, auctioneers of vain crusades,” he said.... [Unfortunately, that is not true - that 'people sniff out' such charlatans. They don't if he happens to be called 'pope'. Catholic reverence and deference to a pope is so automatic that it becomes impossible for 'regular' Catholics - i.e. those who do not look closely at what happens in the Church but simply take every development as a 'given' that they need not question but simply accept - to even think anything negative about a pope.

So, how about this AP story from yesterday. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was not imagining things! How can any sane person make statements like these, given all that's happening? Is this not something that only "narcissists, manipulators, defenders of their own causes, auctioneers of vain crusades" would do in the face of grim objective facts that militate completely against this pope's insane and obstinate advocacy of indiscriminate welcome for 'refugees'???

Pope: Welcoming refugees is
'our greatest security against terrorism'


VATICAN CITY, Sept. 17, 2016 (AP) — Pope Francis has encouraged Europeans to welcome refugees, calling authentic hospitality "our greatest security against hateful acts of terrorism."

Francis Saturday spoke to alumni of Jesuit schools in Europe. who were in Rome for a conference on refugees.

The pope said: "I encourage you to welcome refugees into your homes and communities, so that their first experience of Europe is not the traumatic experience of sleeping cold on the streets, but one of warm welcome."

Telling his audience that more than 65 million persons are forcibly displaced around the world, he advised going "beyond mere statistics."

The problem is Bergoglio makes up his own statistics to support his 'vain crusade' {vain in both senses of the word - futile, as well as self-centered). Here is what German state radio says, citing figures from the United Nations Commission for Refugees, about the actual extent of the refugee crisis in Europe - the current theater of Bergoglian concern:
Refugees are people recognised under the 1951 UN convention, which grants them protection outside their country of origin. In 2014, 19.5 million people were refugees. The largest share of them - 4 million - originate from Syria. That number is followed by 2.6 million Afghan people and 1.1 million Somalians.

Up until now, there are no official figures on how many refugees each country took in in 2015 - most numbers refer to the previous year.

Asylum seekers are people who are seeking protection, but for whom it's still unclear whether they're eligible for refugee status. When they apply for asylum, they are requesting to be officially recognised as a refugee. If their application is granted, they are then considered as refugees, too. In 2014, there were 1.8 million asylum seekers in total, according to UNHCR estimates.
Quoting inflated 'statistics' taken out of thin air is just a big lie, but this pope obviously does not care if he tells these big whoppers.

I certainly don't start my day by hunting out anything 'negative' about JMB - it just so happens that most of the 'newsworthy' things he says and does, meaning those that the media invariably report, happen to be negative, from both the Catholic point of view and by sheer common sense. Who would think, for instance, that he could ever make a statement like the one he is quoted to have made above?

Consider the Bergoglian insanity - and decidedly one-sided view of reality on the refugee-terrorism-Islam issues - in the light of
the headlines today, Sept. 18, 2016 (PewSitter's selection; for some reason Canon212 is behind the curve today):


TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 21 settembre 2016 06:09
September 20, 2016 headlines

Canon212.com

For some reason, PewSitter lagged today in including the big papal event of the day in its above-the-fold headline aggregation...
PewSitter


Not that one expected anything but the stalest platitudes about PEACE from the Bergoglian version of the Assisi inter-faith meeting.
Of course, everyone and his grandmother - and every beauty pageant hopeful - 'wants peace in the world'. But it has just occurred
to me (so habituated I have been by all the calls for peace since I can remember) that the world is seeking peace as the absence of
conflicts or wars that disrupt the lives of millions. But this is not the peace Jesus spoke of - probably because wars and conflicts
are part and parcel of humanity's earthly lot after the Fall, and he did not come to us to eliminate the physical and material
consequences God intended for man after the Fall... Yet even the popes have not been exempt from making these utopian calls for peace.

What is the peace Jesus spoke of when he told his disciples in one of his parting discourses, "Peace I leave you, my peace
I give you"? I googled what Benedict XVI had to say about this, and came up with his catechesis of April 11, 2012:
In this Catechesis I would like to demonstrate the transformation that the Pasch of Jesus worked in his disciples.

Let us start with the evening of the day of the Resurrection. The disciples had locked the door to the house for fear of the Jews (cf. Jn 20:19). Fear caused their hearts to miss a beat, and prevented them from reaching out to others and to life. The Teacher was no longer. The memory of his Passion gave rise to uncertainty. Yet Jesus had his followers at heart and was about to fulfil the promise he had made during the Last Supper: “I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you” (Jn 14: 18) and he also says this to us, even in overcast weather: “I will not leave you desolate”.

With Jesus’s arrival the disciples’ situation of anguish changes radically. He enters through closed doors, he stands in their midst and gives them the peace that reassures: “Peace to you” (Jn 20:19b).

It is a common greeting but it now acquires new significance because it brings about an inner change; it is the Easter greeting that enables the disciples to overcome all fear.

The peace that Jesus brings is the gift of salvation that he had promised in his farewell discourses: “peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27).

On this day of the Resurrection he gives it in fullness and for the community it becomes a source of joy, the certainty of victory, and security in relying on God. “Let not your hearts be troubled”, (Jn 14:1), do not be afraid, he also says to us.

After this greeting, Jesus shows the disciples the wounds in his hands and in his side (cf. Jn 20:20), signs of what has occurred and will never be cancelled: his glorious humanity remains “wounded”.

The purpose of this act is to confirm the new reality of the Resurrection: Christ, now among his own, is a real person, the same Jesus who three days earlier was nailed to the cross. And it is in this way that in the dazzling light of Easter, in the encounter with the Risen One, the disciples perceive the salvific meaning of his passion and his death. Then sorrow and fear turn into full joy. The sorrow and the wounds themselves become a source of joy.

The joy that is born in their hearts derives from “[having seen] the Lord” (Jn 20:20). He repeats to them: “Peace be with you” (v. 21). By then it was obvious that it was not only a greeting. It was a gift, the gift that the Risen One wants to offer his friends, but at the same time it is a consignment.

This peace, which Christ purchased with his blood, is for them but also for all, the disciples must pass on to the whole world. Indeed, he adds: “as the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (ibid.).

The Risen Jesus returned to his disciples to send them out. He had completed his work in the world, it was then up to them to sow faith in hearts so that the Father, known and loved, might gather all his children from the dispersion.

But Jesus knows that his followers are still fearful, even now. Thus he carries out the gesture of blowing upon them and regenerates them in his Spirit (cf. Jn 20:22); this action is the sign of the new creation.

In fact, with the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes from the Risen Christ, a new world begins. The sending of the disciples on mission is the beginning of the journey in the world of the people of the New Covenant, a people who believe in him and in his work of salvation, a people who witness to the truth of the Resurrection.

This newness of life that does not die, brought by Easter, must be spread everywhere so that the thorns of sin, which wound the human heart, leave room for the new shoots of Grace, of God’s presence and of his love that triumph over sin and death....

No one - not even the popes - ever talks about the peace that Jesus meant at these frequent and periodic kumbaya meetings to advocate 'peace' in the worldly sense, a goal that mankind is probably never destined to have, if we take to heart the lesson God means us to have from the Fall.

Because of the necessary corrective from Benedict XVI to this beauty-pageant trivialization of the quest for 'world peace', I failed to make my other point about the Bergoglian Assisi kumbaya. Which is that this is the big event for which he declined to close the 26th National Eucharistic Congress of Italy in Genoa last Sunday.

Or to be more accurate, he - Primate of Italy ex officio - had declined the invitation by the Italian bishops on the ground that he was abjuring any travel within Italy during his Year of Mercy (a clear non sequitur. How does traveling in Italy - when he has been travelling abroad and even going to Sweden to kick off the 'celebration' of Martin Luther's schism - interfere in any way with observing his Year of Mercy?).

Yet shortly thereafter he announced he would be travelling to Assisi for his own version of the Assisi interfaith peace meetings. And, of course, that he would be visiting the region hit by the recent earthquake in Italy.


Italy's Eucharistic Congress takes place once every six years. Benedict XVI attended both Congresses held while he was Pope -
in Bari in 2005, and in Ancona in 2011.

Perhaps it is emblematic that Benedict XVI's first trip outside Rome as Pope was to close the 24th National Eucharistic Congress in Bari in May 2005, barely three weeks after he became Pope - whereas the first trip the current pope made outside Rome was to Lampedusa to publicize his ongoing dedicated campaign to promote indiscriminate mass migration to Europe.

It turns out that Riccardo Cascioli had similar misgivings as I did about Assisi 2016, although he comes at it from a different approach...

Losing sight of the intuition that
prompted John Paul II to convene
the first Assisi interfaith meeting
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from

Sept. 19, 2016

Yesterday, Sept. 18, marked a strange coincidence: Italy's National Eucharistic Congress closed in Genoa while an inter-religious meeting for peace opened in Assisi ("Thirst for peace" was the theme) on the 30th anniversary of a meeting first called bu John Paul II in October 1986.

It was a coincidence not intended nor even noted by the respective organizers and yet it is very significant. Because while in Assisi, they will be praying for peace, in Genoa, the participants were adoring Christ who is 'the true peace'. The Genoa event is. one might say, the foundation for the other, which was the pope's meeting with representatives of other religions in Assisi. [In Benedict XVI's version of the Assisi meeting, he expressly invited agnostics and atheists to take part as well: after all, just because they don't believe in a Supreme Being does not mean they do not also want peace. Were there any such who were invited to Assisi this year?]

This was very clear to John Paul II when he had the intuition to convoke representatives of all religions in Assisi. He explained it vry well two months afterwards in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, in which he rejected any 'confusion or syncretism' arising from the event.

Instead, he placed the meeting in the context of 'the order of creation': "The unity of the divine origin of the entire human family, of every man and woman, which is reflected in the unity of the divine image which each of us carry within (cf Gen 1,26) and which orients us to a common end (cf. Nostra Aetate, 1)».

From this point of view, religious divisions are the outcome of the Fall, or sin. It is for the Church - the repository of revealed truth, 'sacrament of salvation', and 'sign and instrument of intimate union with God and the unity of the entire human rce", to bear witness to that which all religions and all men aspire for: "The divine design, unique and definitive, hs its center in Jesus Christ, God and man, in whom human beings find the fullness of religious life and in whom God has reconciled all things to himself".

Prayer, said John Paul II - "by everyone according to his own identity and in the quest for truth"- is the common akcnowledgment that peace comes from God, it is a step in the awareness of that order of creation which is valid for everyone.

This was the image John Paul II offered of that first Assisi meeting: "The Catholic Church which leads by the hand all Christian brothers, and all Christians together holding hands with the brothers of other religions".

That is why in his brief address concluding that 1986 meeting, he announced with great clarity: "With regard to the last prayer we heard - the Christian prayer - in the series of prayers offered, I profess once more my conviction, shared by all Christians, that it is in Jesus Christ, as the Savior of all men, in whom we must find true peace... It is, in fact, my conviction of faith that made me turn to you, representatives of the Christian churches and ecclesial communities, and of the world religions, in the spirit of profound love and respect.

With other Christians, we share many convictions, particularly about peace. With the other world religions, we share a common respect and obedience to conscience which teaches us all to seek the truth, to love and to serve all individuals and all peoples, and thus make peace among individuals and among nations".

Regrettably, in the interventions that preceded the Assisi meeting this year and in the opening addresses on Sunday, one could find no trace of John Paul II's approach.

Andrea Ricciardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community and true motor for the annual inter-religious peace meetings that have taken place every year [in a different city around the world] as a continuation and legacy of the first meeting in 1986, continually evokes 'the spirit of Assisi' and claims to be John Paul II's heir in terms of inter-religious dialog, but his approach is quite different from that of John Paul II in 1986.

Dialog is the order of the day, while the divine design is reduced a generic peace, in the light of which, we are made to understand, affirmation of one's own identity serves no purpose.

That is why it is not possible to see a link with the Eucharistic Congress, which St John Paul II - through his profession of faith at Assisi 1986 - held up as the foundation for the meeting in Assisi.

Obviously we do not know what Pope Francis will say when it is his turn to meet other religious leaders in Assisi, and we do not doubt that he, at least, would reaffirm his predecessor's intuition in 1986.

Bt there is an objective fact that, like it or not, does send a message: Pope Francis will be in Assisi but did not go to Genoa. And because the media spotlight only follows the Pope, so all the attention will be on Assisi, while the Eucharistic Congress took place unobserved, thus losing a great occasion to show the origin and the end of any dialog for peace.

But there was another papal gesture that was significant - the Vatican's failure to invite the Dalai Lama to Assisi this year, when in 1986, he was the most prominent leader next to John Paul II.

Although the news, revealed by the Dalai Lama's secretary, has not been explained or commented on by the Vatican, it seems evident that the decision was made to avoid 'irritating' Beijing at a time when the Holy See is doing all it can to normalize diplomatic relations with Communist China.

In short, it is the return of Realpolitik - which John Paul II decisively opposed - which one had thought was buried after its failure with the countries of the Eastern European Communist bloc.

But then, even two years ago when the Dalai Lama was in Rome of a meeting of Nobel Prize winners, this pope also did not invite him to the Vatican.

Nut there is an objective difference between a private audience, which can be denied without any major problem [not when the guest is the Dalai Lama!], and a public initiative of a religious nature which is made to conform to the political exigencies of the moment.

Not that one was dying to see the Dalai Lama in Assisi this year, but not to see him because the pope is trying to please the 'emperor' causes some disquiet [and leaves a very bad taste in the mouth!]
TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 21 settembre 2016 07:28



One must note that the title of this 'charge sheet' against Jorge Mario Bergoglio acting as pope and nominal leader of the Roman Catholic
Church is the English translation of the title of Pius XI's encyclical against Nazism Mit brennender Sorge.

The use of that title is an indicator of just how disastrous the state of the Church is from the Bergoglian depredations and wreckovations
to make her over into the church of Bergoglio. Well, he can have his church, we will keep ours. He will not be pope forever, after all.

I don't think this will be the last of these formal public statements of protest and objection to the insistently self-righteous, sanctimonious
and utterly reprehensible behavior of this pope, but it does help to enumerate the litany of his offenses every so often, because with
every new offense - and there seems to be one almost every day - people tend to forget the older offenses. And with this or any pope,
we cannot afford to forget, ignore or overlook any of them.

With Burning Concern:

We Accuse Pope Francis..

Part I of III
A joint statement by
and

Written by Michael Matt, Christopher Ferrara & John Vennari

September 19, 2016
Feast of Saint Januarius
in the Month of Our Lady of Sorrows

Your Holiness:

The following narrative, written in our desperation as lowly members of the laity, is what we must call an accusation concerning your pontificate, which has been a calamity for the Church in proportion to which it delights the powers of this world.

The culminating event that impelled us to take this step was the revelation of your “confidential” letter to the bishops of Buenos Aires authorizing them, solely on the basis of your own views as expressed in Amoris Laetitia, to admit certain public adulterers in “second marriages” to the sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion without any firm purpose of amending their lives by ceasing their adulterous sexual relations.

You have thus defied the very words of Our Lord Himself condemning divorce and “remarriage” as adultery per se without exception; the admonition of Saint Paul on the divine penalty for unworthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament; the teaching of your two immediate predecessors in line with the bimillenial moral doctrine and Eucharistic discipline of the Church rooted in divine revelation; the Code of Canon Law; and all of Tradition.

You have already provoked a fracturing of the Church’s universal discipline, with some bishops maintaining it despite Amoris Laetitia while others, including those in Buenos Aires, are announcing a change based solely on the authority of your scandalous “apostolic exhortation.”

Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the Church.
Yet, almost without exception, the conservative members of the hierarchy observe a politic silence while the liberals exult publicly over their triumph thanks to you. Almost no one in the hierarchy stands in opposition to your reckless disregard of sound doctrine and practice, even though many murmur privately against your depredations.

Thus, as it was during the Arian crisis, it falls to the laity to defend the Faith in the midst of a near-universal defection from duty on the part of the hierarchs.

Of course we are nothing in the scheme of things, and yet as baptized lay members of the Mystical Body we are endowed with the God-given right and the correlative duty, enshrined in Church law (cf. CIC can. 212), to communicate with you and with our fellow Catholics concerning the acute crisis your governance of the Church has provoked amidst an already chronic state of ecclesial crisis following the Second Vatican Council.

Private entreaties having proven utterly useless, as we note below, we have published this document to discharge our burden of conscience in the face of the grave harm you have inflicted, and threaten to inflict, upon souls and the ecclesial commonwealth, and to exhort our fellow Catholics to stand in principled opposition to your continuing abuse of the papal office, particularly where it concerns the Church’s infallible teaching against adultery and profanation of the Holy Eucharist.

In making the decision to publish this document we were guided by the teaching of the Angelic Doctor on a matter of natural justice in the Church:
“It must be observed, however, that if the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly. Hence Paul, who was Peter’s subject, rebuked him in public, on account of the imminent danger of scandal concerning faith, and, as the gloss of Augustine says on Galatians 2:11, ‘Peter gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path, they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects’.” [Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 33, Art 4]

We have been guided as well by the teaching of Saint Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, regarding licit resistance to a wayward Roman Pontiff:
“Therefore, just as it would be lawful to resist a Pontiff invading a body, so it is lawful to resist him invading souls or disturbing a state, and much more if he should endeavor to destroy the Church. I say, it is lawful to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and by blocking him, lest he should carry out his will…” [De Controversiis on the Roman Pontiff, Bk. 2, Ch. 29].

Catholics the world over, and not just “traditionalists,” are convinced that the situation Bellarmine envisioned hypothetically is today a reality. That conviction is the motive for this document.

May God be the judge of the rectitude of our intentions.

Michael J. Matt
Editor, The Remnant

Christopher A. Ferrara
Columnist for The Remnant and Catholic Family News

John Vennari
Editor, Catholic Family News


LIBER OF ACCUSATION

By the grace of God and the law of Church, a complaint against Francis, Roman Pontiff, on account of danger to the Faith and grave harm to souls and the common good of the Holy Catholic Church.

What sort of humility is this?
On the night of your election, speaking from the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica, you declared: “the duty of the Conclave was to give a bishop to Rome.” Even though the crowd before you consisted of people from around the world, members of the Church universal, you expressed thanks only “for the welcome that has come from the diocesan community of Rome.”

You also expressed the hope that “this journey of the Church that we begin today” would be “fruitful for the evangelization of this beautiful city.” You asked the faithful present in the Saint Peter’s Square to pray, not for the Pope, but “for their Bishop” and you said that the next day you would “go to pray the Madonna, that she may protect Rome.”

Your strange remarks on that historic occasion began with the banal exclamation “Brothers and sisters, good evening” and ended with an equally banal intention: “Good night and sleep well!”

Not once during the first address did you refer to yourself as Pope or make any reference to the supreme dignity of the office to which you had been elected: that of the Vicar of Christ, whose divine commission is to teach, govern and sanctify the Church universal and lead her mission to make disciples of all nations.

Almost from the moment of your election there began a kind of endless public relations campaign whose theme is your singular humility among the Popes, a simple “Bishop of Rome” in contrast to the supposed monarchical pretensions of your predecessors and their elaborate vestments and red shoes, which you shunned.

You gave early indications of a radical decentralization of papal authority in favor of a “synodal Church” taking its example from the Orthodox view of “the meaning of episcopal collegiality and their experience of synodality.” The exultant mass media immediately hailed “the Francis revolution.”

Yet this ostentatious display of humility has been accompanied by an abuse of the power of the papal office without precedent in the history of the Church. Over the past three-and-a-half years you have incessantly promoted your own opinions and desires without the least regard for the teaching of your predecessors, the bimillenial traditions of the Church, or the immense scandals you have caused.
On innumerable occasions you have shocked and confused the faithful and delighted the Church’s enemies with heterodox and even nonsensical statements, while heaping insult after insult upon observant Catholics, whom you continually deride as latter-day Pharisees and “rigorists.” Your personal comportment has often descended to acts of crowd-pleasing buffoonery.

You have consistently ignored the salutary admonition of your immediate predecessor, who resigned the papacy under mysterious circumstances eight years after having asked the bishops assembled before him at the beginning of his pontificate to “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” To quote your predecessor in his first homily as Pope:
“The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.”

A selective meddling in politics, always politically correct
Throughout your tenure as “Bishop of Rome” you have shown scant regard for the limitations of papal authority and competence. You have meddled in political affairs such as immigration policy, penal law, the environment, restoring diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba (while ignoring the plight of Catholics under the Castro dictatorship) and even opposing the Scottish independence movement.

Yet you refuse to oppose secularist governments when they defy the divine and natural law by such measures as legalizing “homosexual unions,” a matter of divine and natural law on which a Pope can and must intervene.

In fact, your many condemnations of social evils — all of them politically safe targets — are continually belied by your own actions, which compromise the Church’s witness against the manifold errors of modernity:

• Contrary to the constant teaching of the Church based on Revelation, you demand worldwide total abolition of the death penalty, no matter how grave the crime, and even the abolition of even life sentences, yet you have never called for the abolition of legalized abortion, which the Church has constantly condemned as the mass murder of innocents.

• You declare that the simple faithful are sinning gravely if they fail to recycle their household waste and turn off unnecessary lighting, even as you expend millions of dollars on vulgar mass events surrounding your person in various countries, to which you travel with large entourages in charter jets that emit vast quantities of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

• You demand open borders for Muslim “refugees” in Europe, who are predominantly military-age males, while you live behind the walls of a Vatican city-state that strictly excludes non-residents — walls built by Leo IV to prevent a second Muslim sack of Rome.

• You speak incessantly of the poor and the “peripheries” of society but you ally yourself with the wealthy and corrupt German hierarchy and pro-abortion, pro-contraception, pro-homosexual celebrities and potentates of globalism.

• You deride greedy corporate profit-seeking and “the economy that kills” while you honor with private audiences and receive lavish donations from the world’s wealthiest technocrats and corporate heads, even allowing Porsche to rent the Sistine Chapel for a “magnificent concert… arranged exclusively for the participants,” who paid some $6,000 each for a Roman tour — the first time a Pope has allowed this sacred space to be used for a corporate event.

• You demand an end to “inequality” as you embrace communist and socialist dictators who live in luxury while the masses suffer under their yokes.

• You condemn an American candidate for the presidency as “not Christian” because he seeks to prevent illegal immigration, but you say nothing against the atheist dictators you embrace, who have committed mass murder, persecute the Church and imprison Christians in police states.

In promoting your personal opinions on politics and public policy as if they were Catholic doctrine, you have not hesitated to abuse even the dignity of a papal encyclical by employing it to endorse debatable and even demonstrably fraudulent scientific claims regarding “climate change,” the “carbon cycle,” “carbon dioxide pollution” and “acidification of the oceans.”

The same document also demands that the faithful respond to a supposed “ecological crisis” by supporting secular programs of environmentalism, such as the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, which you have praised even though they call for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health,” meaning contraception and abortion.

A rampant indifferentism
While hardly a pioneer respecting the destructive post-conciliar novelties of “ecumenism” and “inter-religious dialogue,” you have promoted to a degree not seen even during the worst years of the post-conciliar crisis a specific religious indifferentism that practically dispenses with the mission of the Church as the ark of salvation.

Respecting the Protestants, you declare that they are all members of the same “Church of Christ” as Catholics, regardless of what they believe, and that doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants are comparatively trivial matters to be worked out by agreement of theologians.

Given that opinion, you have actively discouraged Protestant conversions, including one “Bishop” Tony Palmer, who belonged to a breakaway Anglican sect that purports to ordain women. As Palmer recounted, when he mentioned “coming home to the Catholic Church” you gave this appalling reply: “No one is coming home. You are journeying towards us and we are journeying towards you and we will meet in the middle.” The middle of what? Palmer died in a motorcycle accident shortly thereafter.

At your insistence, however, the man whose conversion you deliberately impeded was buried as a Catholic bishop — a mockery that was contrary to the infallible teaching of your predecessor that “ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void.” [Leo XIII, Apostolicae curae (1896), DZ 3315]

As to other religions in general, you have adopted as a virtual program the very error condemned by Pope Pius XI only 34 years before Vatican II: “that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule.”

You have been utterly heedless of Pius XI’s admonition “that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.” In that regard, you have suggested that even atheists can be saved merely by doing good, thus eliciting delighted praise from the media.

It seems that in your view Rahner’s heretical thesis of the “anonymous Christian,” embracing virtually all of humanity and implying universal salvation, has definitively replaced the teaching of Our Lord to the contrary: “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; and he that disbelieves shall be condemned (Mk 16:16).”

Part II to be posted Wednesday, Sept. 21
To Include...
• An Absurd Whitewash of Islam
• A Reformist "Dream," Backed by an Iron Fist
• A Relentless Drive to Accommodate Sexual Immorality in the Church
• Amoris Laetita: the Real Motive for the Sham Synod
• A Grave Moral Error Now Explicitly Approved

Part III to be posted Friday, Sept. 23
TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 21 settembre 2016 09:40


Strangely, I have seen only this commentary so far on JMB's startlingly insane statement last week that welcoming immigrants is "our greatest
security against hateful acts of terrorism"...

Pope Francis: Hospitality is
'our greatest security against
hateful acts of terrorism'
Hospitality is a great virtue. And so is being clear, direct, and truthful
about the serious dangers posed by radical Islam within Europe and the USA.
by Carl E. Olson
Editor


This past Saturday, September 19th, Pope Francis gave an address to Members of the European Confederation and of the World Union of Jesuit Alumni and Alumnae. The focus of the gathering and address was the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe. Francis stated that it is "the greatest humanitarian crisis, after the Second World War."

Yet he makes no mention of causes or origins. He does note that those gathered are there to "explore on this occasion the roots of forced migration". He later refers to " the human tragedy of refugees", but again without any indication of why and how such a tragedy exists.

He then makes this remarkable statement:
And so, I encourage you to welcome refugees into your homes and communities, so that their first experience of Europe is not the traumatic experience of sleeping cold on the streets, but one of warm human welcome. Remember that authentic hospitality is a profound gospel value that nurtures love and is our greatest security against hateful acts of terrorism.

This is rather mind-boggling, to put it mildly. In order for this to be true, it seems to me, either the ultimate goal of ISIS and related groups must be to attain proper hospitality, or being hospitable to those who are fleeing such radical Islamic groups must somehow provide a unique form of protection against the same groups. But both notions are irrational. [To put it more bluntly, INSANE, BONKERS! Knock, knock! Is there a functioning healthy brain under that white skullcap????]

It's one thing to say that being hospitable is an authentic Christian virtue, as it surely is (cf. CCC 1971; Rom 12:9-13); it's quite another to say that it provides security against terrorist attacks. It's as if Francis is saying, "Hey, if we're nice to the bad guys, they'll surely be nice to us." Of course, that is silly, and it also ignores (again) that innocent refugees are being persecuted by the bad guys.

So, while am not criticizing the call to be hospitable to refugees, I think the situation is far more complicated than Francis suggests (in this address and in other places). As Fr. Schall noted in a CWR essay "War, Hospitality, and the Current Refugee Crisis" last Friday [in which he quotes from an unsigned article in L'Osservatore Romano]:

Sixty-five million people are said to be “fleeing”. [So that's the source for JMB saying that in the same speech where he says welcoming migrants is our best protection against terrorism! Fr. Schall is too kind to question the 'statistic', but how can 65 million people be in the act of fleeing their homelands simultaneously? What inexistent space-time warp could possibly accommodate 65 million people fleeing - meaning they have left their homelands but have not yet reached any destination - unbeknownst to all? Nor can such numbers be accommodated in some way station even assuming there were any country that could accommodate millions of transients at a time!]

Why? “To escape war and poverty.” One might wonder: “Is this given reason, to ‘escape war and poverty’, anywhere near an accurate description of what is actually going on in areas from whence people ‘flee’”?

After all, many people in the world are poor but they are not all trying to escape to somewhere else. And are all of these people simply “fleeing” or are many being systematically sent for other purposes than avoiding war and poverty? By not stating accurately what is going on, we have no way of understanding why these particular people are “fleeing” at this time and in these places.

The fact that these “fleeing” people are mostly young Muslim males is more than a little suspicious. (In 2015, reported the United Nations, 72% of the “refugees and migrants” coming into Europe were male; in 2016 the number has been 54%.)

Normally, one would think that Muslims, given a choice, would “flee” to more congenial Muslim lands, of which there are many. Once they arrive in non-Muslim lands, they do not assimilate with the locals, however gladly they use their free facilities.

Rather, they set up their own exclusive enclaves as soon as possible. They establish and enforce their own laws and customs. They are not really emigrants to another land. They are bearers of their own ethos to other lands.

It is mainly a form of political expansion more properly called an “invasion”. They, and the leaders that inspire them, understand the demographic principle in lands of declining populations. It is possible to use both force and the politics of their enemies to take over new areas.

Moreover, what exactly are the “wars” from which people are seeking to escape? Do they really have much to do with poverty? It is not at all obvious that poverty is the cause of the current problems. Most of the major attacks in the West have been engineered by well-educated and often sophisticated young men.

Those who blow themselves up to kill others do so because of religious, not economic, motives. Their religion tells them that it is an act of virtue to die working to expand Islam. Those they kill are justly killed in a just war to expand Islam, as the Prophet commanded them to do. We refuse to believe them; but that is our problem. They do not lie to us about what they are doing.
Fr. Schall's point about "their religion" is backed up well by this from the Boston Herald's report on the weekend attacks in Manhattan:
A man who described himself as a childhood friend of the 28-year-old busted today in connection with this weekend's New York-area bombings told the Herald the suspect made a life-changing trip to Afghanistan two years ago.

"At one point he left to go to Afghanistan, and two years ago he came back, popped up out of nowhere and he was real religious," friend Flee Jones, 27, said of suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami. "And it was shocking. I'm trying to understand what's going on. I've never seen him like this."

Over at NRO, David French makes three points worth pondering:
Here is a plain, inarguable truth: A series of Muslim immigrants and “visitors” are responsible for killing more Americans on American soil than the combined militaries of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Two more attacks over the weekend left 38 Americans wounded, and it appears that both were carried out by Muslim immigrants. ...

Despite making up a tiny fraction of the American population, Muslims are responsible for exponentially more terror deaths than any other meaningful American community. Even if you use the Left’s utterly ridiculous standard of “terror deaths since 9/11” (why exclude America’s worst terror attack when calculating the terror threat?), Muslim terrorists have killed almost twice as many people as every other American faction or demographic combined. ...

The Muslim world has a severe problem with anti-Semitism, intolerance, and terrorism. As I’ve documented before, using data from Pew Foundation surveys, it’s plain that more than 100 million Muslims have expressed sympathy for terrorists such as Osama bin Laden or for barbaric jihadist groups such as ISIS. Hundreds of millions more express support for the most intolerant forms of sharia law. Telethons in Saudi Arabia have raised vast sums of money for terrorist causes, and jihadists have been able to recruit hundreds of thousands of fighters to deploy against Americans, Israelis, and our Muslim allies.

Of course, just pointing out these facts will draw immediate, knee-jerk cries of "Islamophobia" and "bigotry". But that is simply secular-speak for "We're clueless, we have no solutions, and we're looking for easy scapegoats."

Meanwhile, those who have studied ISIS in detail, continually emphasize the deeply religious, apocalyptic nature of the movement. For example, in The Isis Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (Picador/St. Martin's Press, 2015/2016) William McCants notes that ISIS follows end-times prophecies asserting that Jesus will return to fight alongside Muslims against the infidels.

"As in the Bible," writes McCants, "the appearance of Jesus heralds the Last Days. But instead of gathering the faithful up to heaven, he will lead the Muslims in a war against the Jews, who will fight on behalf of the Antichrist, called the Deceiving Messiah. Jesus will 'shatter the crucifix, kill the swine, abolish the protection tax, and make wealth to flow until no needs any more,' says one prophecy attributed to Muhammad and quoted by the first emir of the Islamic State."

As I noted in my June 13th editorial, written after the attacks on the Orlando night club:
However, radical Islam, or Islamism (as Reilly puts it, emphasizing its ideological—ism—character), is not a political aberration but an apocalyptic belief system that seeks to establish — here and now, in history itself — the perfect society, ruled by sharia law.

As Reilly puts it, its adherents have constructed a "reality" that revolved around the "inner perfectibility of history — the achievement of perfect justice here..." The ideological vision leads to the belief that those who commit acts of terrorism are committing acts of moral goodness — "holy" acts that are ushering in a new reality. In the words of Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), a key member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transcendent ends will be achieved by earthly means in order "to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth" and "to create a new world."

This is not a political objective ultimately, as Reilly notes, but a metaphysical one. And the foundation for such a belief system is hatred, as Bin Laden stated: [B]"If the hate is at any time extinguished from the heart, this is great apostasy! ... Battle, animosity, and hatred —directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion."

The hateful acts of terrorism, unfortunately, are not likely to subside any time soon, regardless of hospitality.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 23 settembre 2016 01:57


One must note that the title of this 'charge sheet' against Jorge Mario Bergoglio acting as pope and nominal leader of the Roman Catholic
Church is the English translation of the title of Pius XI's encyclical against Nazism Mit brennender Sorge.

Here is Part II of the three-part charge sheet against JMB/Pope Francis by The Remnant and Catholic Family News....

With Burning Concern:

We Accuse Pope Francis..

Part II of III
A joint statement by
and

Written by Michael Matt, Christopher Ferrara & John Vennari
Sept. 22, 2016

LIBER OF ACCUSATION - Part II

An absurd whitewash of Islam
Assuming the role of a Koranic exegete in order to exculpate Mohammed’s cult from its unbroken historic connection to the conquest and brutal persecution of Christians, you declare: “Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” [Evangelii gaudium, 253]

You ignore the entire history of Islam’s war against Christianity, continuing to this day, as well as the present-day barbaric legal codes and persecution of Christians in the world’s Islamic republics, including Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

These are regimes of oppression intrinsic to Sharia law, which Muslims believe Allah has ordained for the whole world, and which they attempt to establish wherever they become a significant percentage of the population. As you would have it, however, Muslim republics all lack an “authentic” understanding of the Koran!

You even attempt to minimize outright Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, Africa and the very heart of Europe by daring to posit a moral equivalence between Muslim fanatics waging jihad — as they have since Islam first emerged — and imaginary “fundamentalism” on the part of the observant Catholics you never cease publicly condemning and insulting.

During one of the rambling in-flight press conferences in which you have so often embarrassed the Church and undermined Catholic doctrine, you uttered this infamous opinion, typical of your absurd insistence that the religion founded by God Incarnate and the perennially violent cult founded by the degenerate Mohammed are on equal moral footing:
I don’t like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy … this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law … and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence ...

I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them. When fundamentalism comes to kill, it can kill with the language — the Apostle James says this, not me — and even with a knife, no? I do not believe it is right to identify Islam with violence.

It defies belief that a Roman Pontiff would declare that random crimes of violence committed by Catholics, and their mere words, are morally equivalent to radical Islam’s worldwide campaign of terrorist acts, mass murder, torture, enslavement and rape in the name of Allah.

It seems you are quicker to defend Mohammed’s ridiculous and deadly cult against just opposition than you are the one true Church against her innumerable false accusers. Far from your mind is the Church’s perennial view of Islam expressed by Pope Pius XI in his Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart: “Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolatry or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them into the light and kingdom of God.”

A Reformist “Dream,” Backed by an Iron Fist
All in all, you appear to be afflicted by a reformist mania that knows no bounds beyond your “dream” of the way the Church should be. As you declared in your unprecedented personal papal manifesto, Evangelii gaudium (nn. 27, 49):
I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation….

More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat” (Mk 6:37).

Incredibly enough, you profess that the immemorial “structures” and “rules” of the Holy Catholic Church were cruelly inflicting spiritual starvation and death before your arrival from Buenos Aires, and that now you wish to change literally everything in the Church in order to make her merciful. How are the faithful to see this as anything but the sign of a frightening megalomania?

You even declare that evangelization, as you understand it, must not be limited by fear over the Church’s “self-preservation” — as if the two things were somehow opposed!

Your gauzy dream of reforming everything is accompanied by an iron fist that smashes any attempt to restore the vineyard already devastated by a half-century of reckless “reforms.” For as you revealed in your manifesto (Evangelii gaudium, 94), you are filled with contempt for tradition-minded Catholics, whom you rashly accuse of “self-absorbed Promethean neopelagianism” and of “feel[ing] superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past.”

You even ridicule a “supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline” because, according to you, it “leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others…”

But it is you who are constantly classifying and analyzing others with an endless stream of pejoratives, caricatures, insults and condemnations of observant Catholics you deem insufficiently responsive to the “God of surprises” you introduced during the Synod.

Hence your brutal destruction of the thriving Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate on account of a “definitely traditionalist drift.” This was followed by your decree that henceforth any attempt to erect a new diocesan institute for consecrated life (for example, to accommodate displaced members of the Friars) will be null and void absent prior “consultation” with the Holy See (i.e., de facto permission that can and will be withheld indefinitely). You thus dramatically diminish the perennial autonomy of bishops in their own dioceses even as you preach a new age of “collegiality” and “synodality.”

Targeting cloistered convents, you have further decreed measures to compel the surrender of their local autonomy to federations governed by ecclesial bureaucrats, the routine breaking of the cloister for external “formation,” the mandated intrusion of laity into the cloister for Eucharistic adoration, the outrageous disqualification of conventual voting majorities if they are “elderly,” and a universal requirement of nine years of “formation” before final vows, which is certain to stifle new vocations and ensure the extinction of many of the remaining cloisters.

God help us!

A relentless drive to accommodate sexual immorality in the Church
But nothing exceeds the arrogance and audacity with which you have relentlessly pursued the imposition upon the Church universal of the same evil practice you authorized as Archbishop of Buenos Aires: the sacrilegious administration of the Blessed Sacrament to people living in adulterous “second marriages” or cohabiting without even the benefit of a civil ceremony. [Thank God, this not unimportant fact is acknowledged in this manifesto after having been all but ignored by the media and the blogosphere in the past three years!]

From almost the moment of your election you have promoted the “Kasper proposal” — rejected repeatedly by the Vatican under John Paul II. Cardinal Walter Kasper, an arch-liberal even among the liberal German hierarchy, had long argued for the admission of divorced and “remarried” persons to Holy Communion in “certain cases” according to a bogus “penitential path” that would admit them to the Sacrament while they continue their adulterous sexual relations. Kasper belonged to the “St. Gallen group” that lobbied for your election, and you royally rewarded his persistence in error, with the press happily dubbing him “the Pope’s theologian.”

It seems you have little regard for sacramental marriage as an objective fact as opposed to what people subjectively feel about the status of immoral relationships the Church can never recognize as matrimony. In remarks which alone will discredit your bizarre pontificate until the end of time, you declared that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null” whereas certain people cohabiting without marriage can have “a true marriage” because of their “fidelity.” Are these remarks perhaps a reflection of your divorced and “remarried” sister and cohabiting nephew?

Your preposterous opinion — one of the many you have expressed since your election — provoked worldwide protest on the part of the faithful. In an effort to minimize the scandal, the Vatican’s “official transcript” altered your words from “great majority of our sacramental marriages” to “a part of our sacramental marriages” but left intact your disgraceful approbation of immoral cohabitation as “true marriage.”

Nor do you seem concerned about the sacrilege involved in public adulterers and cohabiters receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. As you told the woman in Argentina to whom you gave “permission” on the telephone to receive Communion while living in adultery with a divorced man: “A little bread and wine does no harm.”

You have never denied the woman’s account, and it would only be consistent with your refusal to kneel at the Consecration or before the exposed Blessed Sacrament even though you have no difficulty kneeling to kiss the feet of Muslims during your grotesque parody of the traditional Holy Thursday mandatum, which you have abandoned.

It would also comport with your remarks to a Lutheran woman, in the Lutheran church you attended on a Sunday, that the dogma of transubstantiation is a mere “interpretation,” that “life is bigger than explanations and interpretations, and that she should “talk to the Lord” about whether to receive Communion in a Catholic Church — which she later did following your evident encouragement.

In line with your scant regard for sacramental marriage is your precipitous and secretive “reform” of the annulment process, which you foisted upon the Church without consulting any of the competent Vatican dicasteries.

Your Motu Proprio Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus erects the framework for a veritable worldwide annulment mill with a “fast-track” procedure and nebulous new grounds for expedited annulment proceedings.

As the head of your clandestinely contrived reform later explained, your express intention is to promote among the bishops “a ‘conversion’, a change of mentality which convinces and sustains them in following the invitation of Christ, present in their brother, the Bishop of Rome, to pass from the restricted number of a few thousand annulments to that immeasurable [number] of unfortunates who might have a declaration of nullity…”

Thus does “the Bishop of Rome” demand from his fellow bishops a vast increase in the number of annulments! A distinguished Catholic journalist later reported on the emergence of a seven-page dossier in which curial officials “juridically ‘picked apart’ the Pope’s motu proprio… accuse the Holy Father of giving up an important dogma, and assert that he has introduced de facto ‘Catholic divorce.’”

These officials deplored what this journalist describes as “an ecclesialized ‘Führerprinzip,’ ruling from the top down, by decree and without any consultation or any checks.” The same officials fear that “the motu proprio will lead to a flood of annulments and that from now on, couples would be able to simply exit their Catholic marriage without a problem.” They are “‘beside themselves’ and feel obligated to ‘speak up’…”

But you are nothing if not consistent in pursuing your aims. Early in your pontificate, during one of the in-flight press conferences at which you have first revealed your plans, you stated: “The Orthodox follow the theology of economy, as they call it, and they give a second chance of marriage, they allow it. I believe that this problem must be studied.” For you, the lack of any “second chance of marriage” in the Catholic Church is a problem to be studied. You have clearly spent the past three-and-a-half years contriving to impose on the Church something approximating the Orthodox practice.

A distinguished canonist who is a consultant to the Apostolic Signatura has warned that as result of your reckless disregard of the reality of sacramental marriage:
...A crisis (in the Greek sense of that word) over marriage is unfolding in the Church, and it is a crisis that will, I suggest, come to a head over matrimonial discipline and law…. I think the marriage crisis that he [Francis] is occasioning is going to come down to whether Church teaching on marriage, which everyone professes to honor, will be concretely and effectively protected in Church law, or, whether the canonical categories treating marriage doctrine become so distorted (or simply disregarded) as essentially to abandon marriage and married life to the realm of personal opinion and individual conscience.

'Amoris Laetitia': the real motive for the sham synods
That crisis reached its peak following the conclusion of your disastrous “Synods on the Family.” Although you manipulated this event from beginning to end to obtain the result you desired — Holy Communion for public adulterers in “certain cases” — it fell short of your expectations because of opposition from the conservative Synod Fathers you demagogically denounced as having “closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.”

In a brutal abuse of rhetoric, you likened your orthodox episcopal opponents to the Pharisees, who practiced divorce and “remarriage” according to the Mosaic dispensation. These were the very bishops who defended the teaching of Christ against the Pharisees — and your own designs! Indeed, you seem intent on reviving a Pharisaical acceptance of divorce by way of a “neo-Mosaic practice.”

A renowned Catholic journalist known for his moderate approach to analysis of Church affairs protested your reprehensible behavior: “For a pope to criticize those who remain faithful to that tradition, and characterize them as somehow unmerciful and as aligning themselves with hard-hearted Pharisees against the merciful Jesus is bizarre.”

In the end, the “synodal journey” you extolled was revealed as nothing but a sham concealing the foregone conclusion of your appalling “Apostolic Exhortation,” Amoris Laetitia. Therein your ghostwriters, principally in Chapter Eight, employ artful ambiguity to open wide the door to Holy Communion for public adulterers by reducing the natural law forbidding adultery to a “general rule” to which there can be exceptions for people who “have great difficulty in understanding ‘its inherent values’” or are living “in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently… (¶¶ 2, 301, 304)” AL is a transparent attempt to smuggle a mitigated form of situation ethics into matters of sexual morality, as if the error could be thus confined.

Your evident obsession with legitimating Holy Communion for public adulterers has led you to defy the constant moral teaching and intrinsically related sacramental discipline of the Church, affirmed by both of your immediate predecessors. That discipline is based on the teaching of Our Lord Himself on the indissolubility of marriage as well as the teaching of Saint Paul on the divine punishment due to the unworthy reception of Holy Communion. To quote John Paul II in this regard:
However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried.

They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.

Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage.

This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children's upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.” [Familiaris consortio, n. 84]

You have ignored the worldwide pleas of priests, theologians and moral philosophers, Catholic associations and journalists, and even a few courageous prelates among an otherwise silent hierarchy, to retract or “clarify” the tendentious ambiguities and outright errors of Amoris, particularly in Chapter Eight.

A grave moral error now explicitly approved
And now, moving beyond a devious use of ambiguity, you have authorized explicitly behind the scenes what you have condoned ambiguously in public. The scheme was brought to light with the leaking of your “confidential” letter to the bishops of the pastoral region of Buenos Aires — where, as Archbishop, you had already authorized mass sacrilege in the villas (slums).

In this letter you praise the bishops’ document on “Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia” — as if there were some duty to “apply” the document so as to produce a change in the Church’s bimillenial sacramental discipline. You write: “The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.” Is it a coincidence that this document comes from the very archdiocese where, as Archbishop, you had long since authorized the admission of public adulterers and cohabiters to Holy Communion?

What was only clearly implied before is now made explicit, and those who insisted AL changes nothing have been made to look like fools. The document you now praise as the only correct interpretation of AL radically undermines the doctrine and practice of the Church your predecessors defended.

In the first place, it reduces to an “option” the moral imperative that divorced and “remarried” couples “live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.” According to the bishops of Buenos Aires — with your approval — it is merely “possible to propose that they make the effort of living in continence. Amoris Laetitia does not ignore the difficulties of this option.”

As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared definitively only 18 years ago during the reign of the very Pope you canonized: “if the prior marriage of two divorced and remarried members of the faithful was valid, under no circumstances can their new union be considered lawful and therefore reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception.” This is the constant teaching of the Catholic Church for two millennia.

Moreover, no parish priest or even a bishop has the power to honor in the so-called “internal forum” the claim of one living in adultery that his “conscience” tells him that his sacramental marriage was really invalid because, as the CDF further admonished, “marriage has a fundamental public ecclesial character and the axiom applies that nemo iudex in propria causa (no one is judge in his own case), marital cases must be resolved in the external forum. If divorced and remarried members of the faithful believe that their prior marriage was invalid, they are thereby obligated to appeal to the competent marriage tribunal so that the question will be examined objectively and under all available juridical possibilities.”

Having reduced an exceptionless moral norm rooted in divine revelation to an option, the bishops of Buenos Aires, citing Amoris as their only authority in 2,000 years of Church teaching, next declare: “In other, more complex circumstances, and when it is not possible to obtain a declaration of nullity, the aforementioned option may not, in fact, befeasible.” A universal moral norm is thus relegated to the category of a mere guideline to be disregarded if a local priest deems it “unfeasible” in certain undefined “complex circumstances.” What exactly are these “complex circumstances” and what does “complexity” have to do with exceptionless moral norms founded on revelation?

Finally, the bishops reach the disastrous conclusion you have contrived to impose upon the Church from the beginning of the “synodal journey”:
Nonetheless, it is equally possible to undertake a journey of discernment. If one arrives at the recognition that, in a particular case, there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability (cf. 301-302), particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (cf. notes 336 and 351). These in turn dispose the person to continue maturing and growing with the aid of grace.

With your praise and approbation, the bishops of Buenos Aires declare for the first time in Church history that an ill-defined class of people living in adultery may be absolved and receive Holy Communion while remaining in that state. The consequences are catastrophic.

Part III - to be posted Friday, Sept. 23
To Include...
A “Pastoral Practice” at War with Doctrine
“Exceptions” to the Moral Law Cannot be Confined
Ignoring All Entreaties, You Forge Ahead with Your “Revolution”
We Must Oppose You

TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 23 settembre 2016 04:57


On the occasion of ASSISI 3.1 (the Bergoglian kumbaya, following John Paul II's ASSISI 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, and Benedict XVI's Assisi 2.0 which was distinguished by the participation of agnostics and atheists as well who want peace as much as everyone else), Antonio Socci posted the above graphic on his Facebook page (I provided the English translation).

The quotation comes from Benedict XVI's letter to the Pontifical Lateran University when they renamed the Aula Magna (Great Hall) of the university in his honor, and in which he underscored that "inter-religious dialog cannot replace mission". [Mission, of course, in the sense of Christ's mandate to the apostles to "Go and make disciples of all nations" has simply fallen by the wayside in the church of Bergoglio, citadel of religious indifferentism.]
TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 23 settembre 2016 05:04
Austrian philosopher continues
denouncing 'objectively heretical'
statements by JMB in AL


September 21, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Josef Seifert, Austrian Catholic philosopher and close friend of the late Pope St. John Paul II, said in a new interview that he hopes Pope Francis revokes the “objectively heretical” statements in Amoris Laetitia to avoid “schism,” “heresy,” and “the complete split in the Church.”

Speaking to Gloria.TV about a letter he wrote Pope Francis and an essay he penned outlining some of his concerns with the exhortation, Seifert explained that there are four conclusions one can draw from Amoris Laetitia.

These four conclusions “are radically distinct and therefore I think one must clarify which is the true answer,” he said.

The first conclusion is that it remains sacrilegious for those in a state of unrepentant mortal sin to receive Holy Communion, even though footnote 351 opens the door for this.

Supporters of this argument “can say that the text is not a magisterial document, like Cardinal Burke says, that it is not a document that has the proper form to change the Catholic catechism [and] the 2,000-year-old tradition of sacramental discipline by a few pen strokes. … So nothing changed, basically, and the document perhaps tried to change something but it didn’t change anything.”

“The second [conclusion] is the opposite — the contrary and absolute and radical opposite,” Seifert said. [B]“And that is that every couple, all homosexuals, all lesbians, all adulterers, all remarried, not remarried — everybody is welcome at the table of the Lord.”

He noted that this is essentially the interpretation embraced by the bishops of the Philippines, who “made a big pronouncement to this effect.” [But they merely put into honest words what JMB has obviously given them the green light to do so, with all that studied casuistry in AL, since he cannot be honest and direct about it himself!]

“This interpretation cannot be what the pope really means — must not be what the pope really means because it leads to countless sacrileges, all kinds of grave sinners [coming] out to the Sacrament of Holy Communion,” Seifert said. Allowing this “opens the door to transforming the Church, temple of God, [into] a kind of temple of Satan.” [Ah, but Seifert is giving JMB a gigantic benefit of the doubt here, which he does not deserve at all since no thinking person could possibly think that is not what Bergoglio wants. His church of Nice and Easy is everything that the one true Church of Christ is not, because in the Church, discipline and practice must uphold doctrine. And any exemptions from such discipline vitiate the doctrine itself and ultimately render it useless.]

Seifert called on Pope Francis to “absolutely and obligatorily declare that this [interpretation] is a completely false understanding of the Church teaching.” [But he won't, and we know it. It is self delusion to even indulge in such wishful thinking. Why else is the Vatican doing all it can to encourage bishops and episcopal conferences to issue guidelines and catechize their faithful on the implementation of Chapter 8 in AL - just Chapter 8, have you noticed?, not AL in toto, which, of course, JMB and his ghosts stuffed full of innocuous ballast restating non-controversial Church teaching on family and marriage, but Chapter 8 was really the whole point of the two family synods and the papal exhortation, just so no one thinks otherwise! And why bishops around the world are vying with each other in who can come up with the most liberal implementations of the Bergoglian faux-mercy exemplified in his violation of the Church's immemorial sacramental disciplines in matrimony, pennce and the Eucharist?]

The third possible interpretation of Amoris Laetitia is that couples may “discern” with the help of a priest whether they are really guilty of the actions they continually commit, which the Church labels objectively sinful. [Yeah, right. In the church of Bergoglio sinners are their own judge and jury, self-absolving 'confessants' who will of course find themselves guiltless and sinless and in fact, enjoying that singular state of grace that Bergoglio attributes to them! Well, who needs confession with all those merciful concessions? Or, as Fr H would ask in his ultimate test of Bergoglian mercy, would the same mercy be ever made to sex-offender priests?]

“How should that be applied?” Seifert asked. “Should a priest say to the one adulterer, ‘you are a good adulterer, you are in the state of grace, you are [a] very pious person, so you get my absolution without changing your life and then [you can] go to Holy Communion. … And then come another, and he says, ‘Oh, and you are a real adulterer. You must first confess, you must revoke your life, you must change your life, and then you can go to Communion.’ I mean, how should that work?”

This “seems completely inappropriate” and could become a “pastoral catastrophe,” Seifert warned. He said it could also confuse Catholic divorced and remarried couples, some of whom might be told by their priest to go ahead and receive Holy Communion and others who might be told by the same priest to live abstinently in order to receive Holy Communion.

Seifert noted that this third conclusion contains “the problem of logical fallacy” that assumes that if a person “doesn’t understand that what he does is wrong, that he is innocent and in a state of grace, but the blindness for the wrongness of an action can be itself gravely [sinful].”

“It’s a false assumption that the many couples who do not find anything wrong with remarrying and getting divorced are all innocent sinners in the state of grace, because their blindness [to the fact that they are committing adultery] itself [may be a sin],” Seifert said.

According to Seifert, the fourth possible interpretation of Amoris Laetitia is people can say in good conscience that their first marriage was invalid, even if an ecclesiastical court has said otherwise, and therefore may divorce, “marry” again, and receive the Sacraments while maintaining a sexual relationship with their second spouse.

“It must not be left to the conscience of the individual to judge whether or not his marriage was valid, and also not to the judgment of a single priest, because to judge … the existence of a Sacrament requires a careful investigation and that’s [exactly] the task of Church tribunals and therefore one simply cannot … in conscience say, I was not married and now I marry again,” Seifert explained.

He also said the notion that a person can declare for himself that his marriage was invalid was condemned by the Council of Trent and therefore is not harmonious with Church teaching.

It is “objectively heretical” to claim, as Amoris Laetitia does, that someone may be simply unable to live according to the demands of the Gospel, Seifert said. Amoris Laetitia suggests that people can “recognize that it’s God’s will to live in an adulterous relationship,” but “that contradicts clearly quite a few dogmas of the Tridentine Council and it clearly contradicts Veritatis Splendor and other solemn teachings of the Church,” he said.

Seifert stressed that he was not calling the pope a heretic, simply pointing out that he made heretical statements that should be corrected.

“He says that nobody is condemned forever … which in the context can be interpreted in different ways, but it’s hard to interpret it in any other way than denial of hell,” he said. Christ “warns us for the great, real danger of eternal damnation,” as have many saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary in apparitions approved by the Church, “and therefore, for the pope to invite people in a serious state of sin to go to the Sacraments and at the same time to say nobody will be condemned forever, I think risks to be understood that he denies the possibility of damnation.”

[But he said as much more than two years ago to Eugenio Scalfari - yet another one of his blockbuster doctrinal whoppers that people have forgotten. The problem is that almost every day, JMB comes up with some dubious, questionable, eyebrow-raising or simply wrong statement, that they tned to be forgotten with every new whooper, unless you have a computer mind with instant recall.

Thankfully, the Denzinger-Bergoglio sites do keep track of these statements, and at last count, they had at least 154 such whoppers - which averages to one whopper every eight days in the 1275 days of this pontificate so far! If any one of them had been said by any other pope, it would have been material enough to fuel 'scandal of the century' stories and books. But with this pope, it seems it is just being taken for granted that of course, he is bound to say something un-Catholic or even anti-Catholic when he opens his mouth or writes something.

I would hope that the Remnant-CFN 'WE ACCUSE...' appends the Denzinger-Bergoglio files to its LIBER OF ACCUSATIONS to make sure not one of these statements is missed.]

“So I told the pope that he has to first of all clarify that he didn’t want to deny hell in this statement, which would be against the Holy Scripture, and against several [dogmas],” Seifert said. Even if Pope Francis didn’t mean the statement to seem to be a denial of hell, “I think many people understand it in that way and he should therefore clearly say what is the truth of the Gospel and not appear to deny hell,” he said. This must be done for “clarity’s sake and for pastoral care.” [Forget it! The Vatican did not even bother to deny Scalfari's report back in 2013 about what JMB thinks of hell - there's your answer!]

Pope Francis would only “grow in esteem and respect in the world” if he retracted the statements in Amoris Laetitia that seemingly contradict Catholic doctrine, Seifert said. [That's not an argument one can use to the most popular human being who ever walked the earth! He already has all the adulation and idolatry he wants from the powerful of the earth - what does he need the 'respect and esteem' of Catholics he despises because they are Catholic in the sense 'Catholic' meant before Vatican II?]

“To avoid schism and to avoid heresy and to avoid the complete split in the Church, I think it is necessary that the pope … be told [these] problems” and revoke them, Seifert said. [But what schism? Genuine Catholics will not be driven away from our Church. Sure, the Church will be divided - it was already divided after Vatican II. The division has only been made disastrous because now, the immediate cause is the man who is supposed to be the leader of the Catholic Church. If the Church survived the Arian Crisis, it will survive the 'Bergoglian Crisis'.]

Seifert pointed out that he is not the only Catholic academic raising the alarm about Amoris Laetitia. Professor Robert Spaemann, a leading German philosophy professor and close friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, and Dr. Jude P. Dougherty, the dean emeritus of the School of Philosophy at Catholic University of America, both raised serious concerns with the exhortation. The former called it a “breach” with Catholic tradition and the latter wrote that Pope Francis’s ambiguity means “what was certain before has become problematic.”

“Even if I am murdered for it, I think I have to speak up because one cannot remain silent if one feels that important truths which are also very important for the eternal salvation of the faithful are obscured … in the document,” Seifert said.

Quite a few articles in the past week tackled 'Lettergate' - JMB's praise and unconditional endorsement of guidelines drawn up by the bishops of the Buenos Aires region to implement Chapter 8 of AL. This one is excellet because it also answers a defense of the Bergoglian situational ethics manifest in AL.

The author is the J. Francis Cardinal Stafford Professor of Moral Theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver and Senior Fellow of Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington, D.C. He has a forthcoming book with Catholic University of America Press on the indissolubility of marriage and the Council of Trent.

The Catholic conscience, the Argentine bishops,
and that endlessly problematic encyclical
Chapter 8 of the pope's Apostolic Exhortation is characterized by a false dichotomy between
the objective and subjective realms of morality, contrary to Vatican II and St. John Paul II
by E. Christian Brugger

Sept. 20, 2016

A group of Argentine bishops (ABs) recently published pastoral guidelines for implementing Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (AL). The ABs tell their clergy that under certain circumstances divorced Catholics in sexually active second unions may receive the Holy Eucharist, even without receiving an annulment.

The ABs sent their guidelines to Pope Francis to ask whether their pastoral approach was consistent with the meaning of AL. Pope Francis replied in a letter on papal stationary saying that their “document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia”; he then stated, “There are no other interpretations.”

The authenticity of the pope’s letter was verified on Sept. 12 by the Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano and reprinted later by Vatican Radio. There no longer seems to be any doubt about where Pope Francis stands on the disputed “Kasper Proposal”.

Other authors have commented and reported on the papal reply, so I will not do so here. The purpose of this article rather is to critique the account of moral conscience implicit in the reasoning of the ABs and AL as defended in a recent article in National Catholic Reporter by Michael Lawler and Todd Salzman entitled: “In Amoris Laetitia, Francis’s model of conscience empowers Catholics”. The Salzman-Lawler (SL) duet made fame in 2008 for its publication of the book The Sexual Person, which set forth a fulsome defense of same-sex genital acts from Scripture, tradition, and natural reason, and which was censured by the Committee on Doctrine of the USCCB in 2010.

In the NCR article, the authors consider what they refer to as two “diametrically opposed” understandings of conscience, one which they say overly emphasizes the “objective realm” of moral truth, and the other which, in their opinion, rightfully emphasizes the “subjective realm” of freedom and individuality. Let’s call these the “objectivist” and “subjectivist” models.

SL say that St. John Paul II [1] Archbishop Charles Chaput (“Pastora]l Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia”) and Germain Grisez [2 represent the objectivist model; and Pope Francis (in Evangelii Gaudium 231-232 and Amoris Laetitia Ch. 8), the German Jesuit theologian Josef Fuchs, and German Redemptorist theologian Bernard Häring represent the subjectivist school.

In what follows I will show that SL have set up a false dichotomy between the objective and subjective realms of morality; then demonstrate how that false dichotomy characterizes the account of conscience found in the ABs and Ch. 8 of AL; and finally offer a fair explanation of the John Paul II-Chaput-Grisez (and Vatican II) account of conscience. I end with some remarks on the question of whether Catholics are obliged in conscience to accept the papal prescriptions taught in AL, Ch. 8.

Proportionalism: “no intrinsically wrongful actions”
Before summarizing SL’s account, it’s important to understand a presupposition of their theory. They follow the reasoning of Fuchs and Häring, who in the years after Vatican II became Europe’s foremost defenders of the moral theory known as “Proportionalism”.[3]

Although it comes in different flavors, common to all proportionalists is the insistence that intending evil as an end or means (what defenders refer to variously as “premoral evil”, “ontic evil”, “disvalue”, etc.) does not by that fact make an action morally wrong.

If there are “morally relevant circumstances” justifying the commission of the evil — what they call “proportionate reasons” (not to be confused with proportionate reason as used in the classical Principle of Double Effect) — then it can rightly be chosen.

Why do I say this is important to understand? Because Proportionalism denies the existence of intrinsically evil actions, types of behavior that when freely chosen always constitute a disorder of the will.

If there are no intrinsically wrongful types of action, then the Church, when it has taught that there are (e.g., adultery), has taught illicitly. And so whereas according to the Church’s teaching, conscience never rightly deliberates over whether or not to have sex with someone other than one’s valid spouse, conscience in the proportionalist account may indeed (in fact sometimes must) remain open to it. Why? Because if there are proportionate reasons for doing so, then under the circumstances it may be the right thing for me to do.

The subjectivist model of conscience
SL argue that a proper understanding of conscience must look, as it were, in two directions, inwardly at the subject and outwardly at the objective world.

Conscience expresses itself inwardly by affirming itself and the subject’s intrinsic goodness as made in God’s image and likeness. It expresses itself outwardly through its encounter with the “material content” of morality. Moral norms make up part of this material content; they are “external” and “objective”.

For decision-making to take place, moral norms and the truths they express must “go through” the two expressions of conscience. The external norms themselves, however, only assist this going-through process — “nothing more than assistance.”

The application of moral norms always needs to be contextualized in light of the complexity of particular concrete historical circumstances. This contextualizing can and often does result in one setting oneself against objective moral norms; SL mention in particular, “Communion for the divorced and remarried without annulment.”

They bitterly criticize Archbishop Chaput’s statement that “the subjective conscience of the individual can never be set against objective moral truth.” On the contrary, they say, Vatican II’s advocacy for religious liberty demonstrates that what’s most central to conscience is its “sincere…search for goodness”, not necessarily its identification with what’s objectively good: “conscience is not at the service of doctrine.” To be sure, they say, objective moral truth is not irrelevant. But “the authority of conscience is not identified with whether or not it obeys the objective norm.”

We see the SL account introduce a split or double notion of moral truth: truth at the level of external, objective moral norms and truth at the internal, subjective level after contextualizing has taken place. It makes possible a conflict between truth at the two levels, thus justifying exceptions to objective moral norms such as the prohibition against adultery.

Pope John Paul II censured this view over thirty years ago because, he said, it leads to the legitimization of “so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium” and justifies “a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept” (Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paeneitentiae [RP] 56).

The logic of the Argentine bishops

This double notion of moral truth is at work in the guidelines of the Argentine bishops. They teach that when “complex circumstances” prevail, and it’s impossible for remarried divorcees to obtain a declaration of nullity, “Amoris Laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”

But these Catholics are engaged in sexually active relationships with individuals other than their valid spouses. The objective and universal norm taught since the time of the apostles condemns all such extramarital acts as adulterous. Therefore, following the logic, there must be a fundamental split between the truth of the external, objective norm and the truth as it applies to individuals in their concrete subjective situations.

The bishops’ hackneyed language of “journey” and “discernment” [which is merely their direct reprise of JMB's favorite catchwords in his theology of niceness at the cost of Truth - yes, Christ, who is Truth, has become quite expendable n the church of Bergoglio!] masks the true logic of their policy: In the fact of complex circumstances, the universal moral truth that adultery is always wrong does not apply to some individuals.

The Catholic Church’s understanding of conscience
This is precisely what John Paul II criticized in Veritatis Splendor (1993) when he refers to “currents of thought which posit a radical opposition between moral law and conscience” (no. 32).

These views hold that objective moral norms “cannot be expected to foresee and to respect all the individual concrete acts of the person in all their uniqueness and particularity”; moral norms “are not so much a binding objective criterion for judgments of conscience, but a general perspective [recall SL’s statement, ‘nothing more than assistance’] which helps man tentatively to put order into his personal and social life” (VS 55).

This view cannot be squared with the teaching on conscience of Vatican II and Catholic theological tradition. Gaudium et Spes teaches that conscience is held “to obedience” by the moral law (no. 16). And Saint Bonaventure teaches that “conscience is like God’s herald and messenger; it does not command things on its own authority, but commands them as coming from God’s authority, like a herald when he proclaims the edict of the king” (In II Librum Sent., dist. 39, a. 1, q. 3, c.).

The moral law it heralds is at once integrally subjective and firmly objective - subjective inasmuch as it is written by God on our hearts (Rom. 2:15), and objective inasmuch as, quoting Vatican II, it’s a law that man “does not impose upon himself…. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged (cf. Rom 2:14-16)” (GS 16).

So pace SL, conscience in the Catholic view does indeed stand in obedience to the moral law. But this obedience is not servile and passive, not the obedience of a slave to his master. It’s the obedience of a scientist to the truth, or a famished man to a feast, or the ear to sound and the eye to color, or an explorer to his longed-for destination, or of a hunting dog to his quarry.

Conscience is made for moral truth. It searches for, finds, probes and understands more deeply, then directs action as best as it can in accord with it. How can this be a threat? Is a hand a threat to a glove, or a key to a lock? A healthy conscience doesn’t close us down and restrict us. It opens us up to the good and ultimately to God. It makes possible the flourishing of the gift of freedom (See JPII, General Audience, Aug. 17, 1983, 2; Insegnamenti, VI, 2 (1983), 256).

Any account of conscience, therefore, that sets it in opposition to freedom (ala Salzman/Lawler) or makes it indifferent to objective truth (ala Argentine bishops) has misconceived not only conscience and moral truth, but human nature, the doctrine of creation and the Christian moral life.

John Paul II says such a view “is the consequence, manifestation and consummation of another more serious and destructive dichotomy, that which separates faith from morality”; and that it represents “one of the most acute pastoral concerns of the Church”. (VS 88)

Consciences with diminished culpability
What about consciences with diminished responsibility (as mentioned by SL, the ABs and AL, Ch. 8), for this is the category of individuals that apparently are inculpably free to violate the Sixth Precept of the Decalogue?

We might ask first, what is an inculpably ignorant conscience? Catholic moral tradition refers to the case where a conscience
is in error because
(1) it judges to be good something that is objectively bad;
(2) its ignorance is true, i.e., non-culpable; it doesn’t arise from the agent’s own moral failures, such as rationalization, self-deception, willful rejection of the teaching of rightful authorities, or the sinful absenting of oneself from occasions where one could have learned the truth, etc.; and
(3) it is “invincible”, i.e., the agent is unable to overcome the ignorance by himself. In such a case, Catholic tradition affirms that there is no guilt associated with following this conscience; as Vatican II says, “it errs…without losing its dignity” (GS, 16). Why? Because it commands its act in the name of the truth which it sincerely seeks (cf. VS 62).

Perhaps the most serious error of the SL-AB-AL account is the failure to clearly affirm that the inculpable conscience derives its dignity not from its sincerity, subjectivity, or intrinsic value, but from the objective moral truth that it mistakenly considers to be true.

The authors fail to say what must be said to understand properly Catholic tradition on the ignorant conscience, namely, that subjective error is not and must never be equated with objective truth, nor is the value of an act performed in invincible ignorance equivalent to the value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience (cf. VS 63).

It is true that one who chooses evil in good faith does not incur guilt. But the objective bad he chooses is not anthropologically neutral. Given his human nature and the goods that fulfill it, the act is still bad for him. So the child of abusive parents who learns to inculpably lie, develops a habit of lying, which separates him from instances of human communion; and the girl who through fear of rejection and abandonment aborts her child, destroys the life of a human being and distorts her perception of motherhood; and the gypsy kid who learns to inculpably steal inclines himself to steal more, which deforms his notion of justice and separates him from human communion.

Solution? To form consciences!
This leads to an unavoidable conclusion. If faced with a putatively ignorant conscience, Catholic pastors should make every reasonable effort to assist it to step out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of moral truth. We should form consciences, not leave them in error.

How can one “prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2), if one lacks knowledge of God’s law and the principles of the moral order (cf. VS 64)?

When JPII exhorts pastors to put themselves “at the service of conscience”, he means at the service of true human freedom. Unless consciences are formed in the truth, they won’t be able to avoid being “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles (Eph 4:14).”

Forming consciences assists them “not to swerve from the truth about the good of man,” it helps them, especially in more difficult questions, not only “to attain the truth with certainty”, but also “to abide in it” (VS 64). Only through a “frank and open acceptance of the truth” can conscience attain to authentic freedom.

To authors who say that it is better to leave people in ignorance than to teach them truths that might be hard for them to bear, we should reply that every conscience has a right not to be left in confusion and error (RP, 33). Pastors entrusted with the care of consciences have a responsibility to serve the truth.

Moral truth must always be communicated in charity, which requires that a proper concern for the disposition and receptivity of the hearer be taken into consideration. It might even be the case that a pastor withholds for a time the full truth because he judges that communicating it all at once to one who is too fragile or ill-disposed might be the cause of unnecessary estrangement. But doing so must itself always be in deference to the rights of conscience and at the service of the truth, which the pastor hopes gradually to communicate in its fullness.

But if in this way truth needs charity, it is even more the case that charity needs truth, lest it “degenerates into sentimentality” and by and by, under pretense of misguided compassion, it “comes to mean the opposite” (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 3).

Are Catholics obliged to assent to papal teaching in AL, Ch. 8?
The Argentine bishops following AL, Ch. 8 (no. 301) teach that the concrete situation of some remarried divorcees may not allow them to live chastely without committing further sin. In this case pastors may and even should affirm them in their lifestyle and free them to return to the Holy Eucharist.[4]

One of my seminarians recently came to me with a worried look on his face wondering whether because this was taught in a papal document he was obliged in conscience to accept it as true. I told him that Vatican II teaches that Catholics are obliged to receive the teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, which the teaching of Amoris Laetitia constitutes, with a “religious submission of mind and will” (“religiosum voluntatis et intellectus obsequium”; Lumen Gentium 25).

I said this obsequium is different from the “assent of faith” (de fide credenda) required for the truths of Divine Revelation (cf. CDF, Donum Veritatis, no. 23). Obsequium means we come to the teaching with intellectual docility, giving it a presumption of truth, with a readiness to assent to it, and, if it’s moral instruction, to apply it to our lives.

But neither intellectual docility, nor readiness of will implies that we accept the teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium without subjecting it to the authority of faith and reason. We are obliged in conscience to accept what’s true. The Holy Spirit guards the Church from error when she teaches infallibly, and so we can be confident that teachings taught infallibly are true. But the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the pope and bishops when they exercise their Ordinary Magisterium does not guard them from error.

And so we must always consider these teachings of the Church in the light of what we already know to be true concerning Catholic faith and morals. If after careful consideration we conclude that some teaching of the pope or bishops is inconsistent with the teaching of Christ or with moral or pastoral issues that the Church has already authoritatively and rightly settled, then we have no obligation to assent to it and we may be obliged to oppose it.

This teaching that Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried, who are living in sexually active relationships with those who are presumptively not their valid spouses, are sometimes free to return to the Holy Eucharist can only be true if one or more of the following seven propositions are true:
1 - Adultery is not always wrongful.
But Divine Revelation definitively rules this out.
2 - Not everyone who engages in sexual intercourse with someone other than one’s valid spouse commits adultery.
This presumes the proportionalist premise that adultery is properly defined as engaging in wrongful sex with someone other than one’s valid spouse; but the couples envisaged by the ABs and in AL have proportionate reasons to engage in extramarital intercourse; so they are not engaging in wrongful sex, therefore not in adultery.

This kind of reasoning is authoritatively condemned in Veritatis Splendor, which teaches: “Such theories however are not faithful to the Church’s teaching, when they believe they can justify, as morally good, deliberate choices of kinds of behavior contrary to the commandment so of the divine and natural law. These theories cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral tradition” (no. 76).

3 - A validly consummated Christian (i.e., sacramental) marriage is not absolutely indissoluble, therefore the dissolution of sacramental marriages is sometimes possible freeing the partners to validly remarry.
The Council of Trent infallibly defines that consummated Christian marriages are absolutely indissoluble (Session 24, Preface, Canons 5 & 7).[5]

4 - Adultery is always wrong and is defined as sexual intercourse with someone other than one’s valid spouse, but pastors who are certain that a sexually active civilly remarried Catholic is invincibly ignorant of his objectively adulterous lifestyle may sometimes deliberately leave him in his ignorance while simultaneously encouraging him to return to Holy Communion.

Pope Francis rightly teaches that we can’t judge the consciences of others, not ever, which means we can neither condemn them nor acquit them; this means not only that pastors cannot have certainty that penitents have met the conditions for mortal sin, they also cannot be certain that civilly remarried Catholics who are in objective violation of the Sixth Precept of the Decalogue are invincibly ignorant and therefore not committing mortal sin; and if these people are in mortal sin and they return to Holy Communion, they add to the grave sin of adultery the graver sin of sacrilege.

Conscientious pastors cannot rightly subject Christians to this kind of potential spiritual harm; nor can they rightly risk leading the faithful “into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage” (John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 84; also Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 37); nor because the lifestyles of these persons “objectively contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and made present in the Eucharist” can they rightly free them to receive Holy Communion (Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, no. 29).

5 - Sometimes it is impossible to avoid mortal sin without committing further and graver sins. Therefore, the “lesser evil” of adultery should sometimes be chosen to avoid greater evils.
The Council of Trent infallibly condemns the proposition that it is sometimes impossible for Christians to keep the Commandments (Session 6, Canon 18).

6 - It is not always gravely sinful for unrepentant adulterers to receive Holy Communion.
This contradicts the teaching of St. Paul, the Council of Trent, Catholic Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

St. Paul: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27).

Trent: “In order that so great a sacrament may not be received unworthily, and hence unto death and condemnation, the holy council establishes and declares that, granted the availability of a confessor, those burdened by an awareness of mortal sin, however much they may feel themselves to be contrite, must first avail themselves of sacramental confession. But if anyone presumes to teach, preach or obstinately assert the contrary or even defend it in public debate, by that very act he shall be excommunicated” (Session 13, Canon 11)
See also CIC, can. 916; CCC 1385, 1415.

7 - Penitents can receive absolution for sins when they manifestly and resolutely lack resolve to reject those sins and avoid them in the future.
This contradicts Catholic Canon Law: “To receive the salvific remedy of the sacrament of penance, a member of the Christian faithful must be disposed in such a way that, rejecting sins committed and having a purpose of amendment, the person is turned back to God” (CIC, Canon 987; also Canons 959, 980)

I sincerely cannot see how the pastoral instruction permitting unannulled remarried Catholics to return to Holy Communion while their first spouses still live is compatible with the faith, morals and disciplinary practice of the Catholic Church.

Endnotes:
1 See St. JP II Familiaris Consortio (nos. 8, 76, esp. 84).
2 See Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1: “Christian Moral Principles,” ch. 3
3 See SL’s, The Sexual Person, p. 225.
4 “A subject may know full well the rule, yet…be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin” (AL 301).
5 It should be said that because of the diriment impediment instituted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (Session 24, Tametsi), Catholics cannot validly marry merely by a civil ceremony. Thus, civilly remarried Catholics, even if their first marriages are invalid, are not validly married in virtue of the civil ceremony.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 23 settembre 2016 05:30
Sept. 22, 2016 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com
TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 23 settembre 2016 22:48


"FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD OF THE NEW AND EVERLASTING TESTAMENT: THE MYSTERY OF FAITH -
WHICH FOR YOU AND FOR MANY WILL BE SHED UNTO THE REMISSION OF SINS."
How have we come from utmost adoration of for the Eucharist to a papal sanction that would allow the mass sacrilege of 'communion for everyone'?

A young woman with a Master's degree in English from Harvard University has made this highly original juxtaposition of Doestoevsky's Grand Inquisitor who did not find Christ merciful enough and St. Augustine reflecting on the sinful life he had led as a libertine and unmarried cohabitator, with the current pope's advocacy of 'communion for everyone'...

On allowing the unworthy
reception of the Eucharist
by JULIA MELONI

September 23, 2016

Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor accused Christ of insufficiently loving the “weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man.” Christ, he declared, cared only for those “great and strong” souls who would freely obey him for the sake of the bread of Heaven.

So the Grand Inquisitor would “care for the weak too” — the “millions” who are too “sinful and rebellious” to follow Christ’s law out of love for the Eucharist. He would leave Christ’s “proud” followers and go “back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble.”

He would, in a mercy exceeding Christ’s, “allow them even sin.” [Who could have imagined that Dostoyevsky had created a character who in this particular respect is very alive today and earnestly playing at 'outdoing Christ in his mercy'???? And, BTW, the polar opposite of the man the media have called the Grand Inquisitor of the Catholic Church since the 1980s!]

Today, instead of being accused of cold exclusionism, Christ is supposed to have exonerated himself by mercifully permitting what he once called serious sin. Discussing the recent papal letter lauding Eucharistic access for certain divorced and remarried persons who aren’t celibate, Ross Douthat notes the effective division between an unchanged magisterial rule and a parallel “Francis position” that could ultimately “signal approval to any stable relationship.”

The Argentine bishops praised by Pope Francis say it’s “possible to propose” continence to the remarried but some need the Eucharist first to “continue maturing and growing.” It’s as if the “proud” and “strong” are still allowed their elite spiritual athletics, while the “humble” are finally nourished by their formerly frigid, derelict Mother Church.

Many have strongly lamented the Pope’s letter and its ramifications for orthodoxy and unity, and reiterated the legitimacy and necessity of opposing its “permission” for grave sins.

“The Eucharist, of course, is the greatest treasure that Christ gave the Church; it must be safeguarded, and we cannot say that adultery is not a mortal sin or it’s not a public offense against God’s order,” said Fr. Gerald Murray.

And now we increasingly wonder: will this updated, more “merciful” Christ rest while he can still be accused of restricting his Sacrament of Love? Robert Royal senses, with trepidation, a “new vision of the Eucharist,” a looming confirmation of reports that Pope Francis wants to extend the Eucharist to all, Catholic or not.[Confirmation, shconfirmation! Do we really think the Vatican will issue a golden seal of Bergoglian approval stamped on every statement that this pope is, in effect, allowing COMMUNION FOR EVERYONE? He did it for years in Buenos Aires, presumably without anything written in black and white to incriminate him canonically. Which is the same reason he and his ghosts went to all that trouble to cloak his YES TO COMMUNION FOR REMARRIED DIVORCEES EVEN IF THEY CONTINUE TO LIVE IN ADULTERY in AL with all kinds of casuistry and sophistry. And which is why we will never see a formal seal of approval on these permissions for mass sacrilege from this pope. He's not stupid. He's not going to saw off himself the audacious profanatory (but 'authoritative' because he is pope) limb he's been preachifying from!]

The Grand Inquisitor claimed that a flock divided by Christ’s stern moral commands could “come together again” through “permission” to sin and universal bread. Such bread, he said, would fulfill humanity’s “everlasting craving” for comfortable “common worship.”

He said that men would cry out against Christ: “Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!” [Was JMB reading out of the Grand Inquisitor's playbook? So, who's the current embodiment of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, hmmm???]

He spoke of earthly bread before virtue — but what if, in the name of mercy, we feed the masses heavenly bread instead?

We’ve been warned before that, if we don’t enforce the canons on worthy reception of the Eucharist, we’ll proliferate grave sins of sacrilege and betray a “deterioration in the Church’s belief in the Real Presence” and Hell. We’ll subvert true oneness; we’ll risk the same stark moral divisions present at the Last Supper.

We’ve been warned that if Eucharistic access becomes a “matter of justice” — if we insist that Christ’s “real intention” is to remove all stigmas and impediments — the Church becomes a mere “promoter of group solidarity and social action,” a trite “dispenser of personal comfort and consolation.”

The Grand Inquisitor would let men trade the “anxiety and terrible agony” of free choice for an “answer” they’d readily “believe” about “the most painful secrets of their conscience.” They’d become “happy babes,” he boasted, with their great “permission” to sin.

So, if today’s priest can “answer” that there’s a “permission slip” for serious sin because of a prospective assessment of ignorance, is he forming upright consciences or just “happy babes”?

Ah, but the unfeeling Christ, the Grand Inquisitor cried, respected man too much, asking “far too much from him.” St. Augustine was for a great time in what we now call an “irregular situation” — or, perhaps, a “real marriage” [by JMB's standards] cohabitating faithfully with the mother of his son.

Today, it is said, we finally grasp that the Church’s “romantic” ideal of marriage is probably akin to an imaginary Platonic Form, that the “heroism” of celibacy is not for “the average Christian” in irregular situations, and that sexual relations in illicit unions may be necessary for the “good” of children.

But poor Augustine of Hippo couldn’t benefit from postmodernity’s superior knowledge of “subjective” states and “concrete” situations.

Instead of being mercifully, inclusively fed with the Eucharist as he was accompanied to an ethereal moral ideal, Augustine had to subsist largely on the tears of his mother, St. Monica. Though profuse, those prayerful tears were probably just so many proud Pharisaical stones “hurled” in judgment against his “difficult” case and “wounded” family.

Likely under the influence of this fundamentalist who believed in “absolute truth,” this Promethean Pelagian who felt “superior” by observing “certain rules” and “inspecting” others, the unaccompanied Augustine melodramatically castigated himself for delaying repentance.
- He wept because he “ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures,” yet no one “imposed restraint on [his] disorder” by exhorting marriage.
- He wept because he “postponed ‘from day to day’ finding life” in God even as he “did not postpone” daily “dying” within himself through sin.
- He wept because, while others were doing austere penance for their unchaste sins, he feebly prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
- He wept because he had been “afraid” that God would “too rapidly heal” him of a lust that he “preferred to satisfy rather than suppress.”
- He wept especially because, as a “eunuch” for God, he could have been “happier finding fulfillment” in divine “embraces.”

Today we deduce that our all-merciful God darkens the sinner’s intellect so that mortal sins become little “venial sins” that hardly hinder Eucharistic union. But angsty Augustine groaned that, with his grossly confused and abused freedom, with his love for “self-destruction,” he was a guilty, miserable prodigal son:
I traveled much further away from you into more and more sterile things productive of unhappiness, proud in my self-pity, incapable of rest in my exhaustion… I exceeded all the bounds set by your law, and did not escape your chastisement—indeed, no mortal can do so. For you were always with me, mercifully punishing me, touching with a bitter taste all my illicit pleasures…

You beat me with heavy punishments, but not the equivalent of my guilt; O my God, my great mercy, my refuge from the terrible dangers in which I was wandering.

Such superfluous soul-drama and sin talk and fear — when Augustine could have reposed, danger-free, in patient accompaniment and tender Eucharistic nourishment! The Grand Inquisitor, in his excessive mercy, would have short-circuited such terrible confessional drama.

Thus poor Augustine, many would say, was never properly catechized on the mercy of God. Oh, yes, he spoke incessantly of God’s mercy with the most poetic, Psalmic cries. “You had pity on [my heart] when it was at the bottom of the abyss.” “I attribute to your grace and mercy that you have melted my sins away like ice.”

But, against today’s great permission to persist in the intent to sin, Augustine the eventual Pelagian — oh, irony! — took the faith “so seriously,” observed it so “rigidly,” that he exchanged joyful “freedom” for gloomy “mourning.”

He taught: “After sin, hope for mercy; before sin, fear justice.” “Woe to him who hopes, so that he may sin: ‘Woe to that perverse hope.’” “He who offends God hoping to be pardoned is a derider, and not a penitent.”

In his new life of sanctity, Augustine preached and practiced the deepest penance. According to his Vita:
[Augustine in his final illness] ordered the four psalms of David that deal with penance to be copied out. From his sick-bed he could see these sheets of paper every day, hanging on his walls, and would read them, crying constantly and deeply. And, lest his attention be distracted from this in any way, almost ten days before his death, he asked … that none should come in to see him…

Augustine’s former mistress had long ago adopted penitential continence, “vowing that she would never go with another man.”

“I swear,” the Grand Inquisitor cried to Christ, “man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast believed him! … Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love.”

As God of old once vindicated Job, Christ could have pointed to the weeping Augustine and his former mistress and every hidden, anonymous Augustine among us who forswears sin out of love for Christ crucified and his Most Holy Eucharist.

And this new Augustine, in turn, would have pointed to the Cross and defended Christ against the accusation that he coldly demands too much from man. Augustine would have cried, with St. John Vianney, that “sin is the executioner of the good God, and the assassin of the soul.”

As the Grand Inquisitor scoffed that renouncing sin is for the “proud” and “strong” alone, Augustine would have wept with the Curé of Ars because the Cross “is what it cost my Savior to repair the injury my sins have done to God.”

Then, trembling that so loving a Savior could be threatened with sins of sacrilege, he would have pointed to the Sacrament of Love and preached, with the saintly priest:
If we understood the value of Holy Communion, we should avoid the least faults… We should keep our souls always pure in the eyes of God… Neither can you offend the good God tomorrow [when you receive Holy Communion]; your soul will be all embalmed with the precious Blood of Our Lord.


Apropos the Church's well-considered and well-founded communion ban for certain sinners, here is a most interesting actual episode about how an American bishop sought to enforce the ban on a Catholic politician who flaunted his advocacy of abortion. We know, of course, that this ban has been more honored in the breach than in its execution by priests and bishops who are dutybound to enforce it:

Denying Holy Communion: A case study
by The Most Reverend Rene Henry Gracida, DD
Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi, Texas


"So you wish to stray and be lost? How much better I do not also wish this.
Certainly, I dare say, I am unwelcome. But I listen to the Apostle who says:
‘Preach the word; insist upon it, welcome and unwelcome.’
Welcome to whom? Unwelcome to whom?
By all means welcome to those who desire it; unwelcome to those who do not.
However unwelcome, I dare to say: ‘You wish to stray, you wish to be lost;
but I do not want this’ For the One whom I fear does not wish this.
And should I wish it, consider His words of reproach:
‘The straying sheep you have not recalled; the lost sheep you have not sought.’
Shall I fear you rather than Him?
‘Remember we must all present ourselves before the judgment seat of Christ’
I shall recall the straying; I shall seek the lost.
Whether they wish it or not, I shall do it."
- St. Augustine (Sermo, 46, 1-2: CCL 41, 529-530)

The controversy over denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians has generated a lot of heat and very little light. Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church have spoken clearly on the subject, but some either do not understand what has been said, or worse, have chosen to ignore it.

Saint Paul said: "This means that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord. A Man should examine himself first, only then should he eat of the bread and drink of the cup. He who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks a judgment on himself." (1 Corinthians 11:27-29) The prohibition found in the declarations of the Magisterium is based on this divine revelation. The Church is not free to enact positive ecclesiastical laws which would oppose this revealed doctrine.

"Therefore it is the shepherd’s task not to keep silent, and it is your task, even if we the shepherds are silent, to hear the words of The Shepherd from the Scriptures." (St. Augustine, Sermo 46, 20-21)

The Magisterium repeats the injunction of Saint Paul in Canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law: "A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or to receive the Body of the Lord without prior sacramental confession unless a grave reason is present and there is no opportunity to make an act of perfect contrition, including the intention of confessing as soon as possible." The Code of Canon Law of the Eastern Churches has a parallel canon: "Those who are publicly unworthy are forbidden from receiving the Divine Eucharist" (can. 712).

According to the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts in that Council’s June 24, 2000 Declaration on the question: "Should a priest deny Communion to a Catholic who is an obstinate public sinner?" The answer is "yes." The reason cited by the Pontifical Council is: "In effect, the reception of the body of Christ when one is publicly unworthy constitutes an objective harm to the ecclesial communion: it is a behavior that affects the rights of the Church and of all the faithful to live in accord with the exigencies of that communion" (No. 1).

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Code of Canon Law clearly states that "Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion" (can. 915). Significantly, in the light of the current controversy in the United States, the Pontifical Council further stated:
Any interpretation of can. 915 that would set itself against the canon’s substantial content, as declared uninterruptedly by the Magisterium and by the discipline of the Church throughout the centuries, are clearly misleading. One cannot confuse respect for the wording of the law (cfr. Can. 17) with the improper use of the very same wording as an instrument for relativizing the precepts or emptying them of their substance.

Relativism is a philosophical term describing a theory that conceptions of truth and moral values are not based on objectivity and the absolute, but instead are baseless and grounded on that which is relative and subjective to the persons or groups holding them.

I suggest that those who maintain that they cannot support the refusing of Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians because the time of the distribution of Holy Communion is a time of unity in the Body of Christ are indeed relativizers of the objectively established precepts.

Further, their belief that it would therefore be wrong to make it a time of confrontation and discord by refusing Holy Communion to anyone is indeed relativizing the precepts, but moreover, emptying them of their substance as well.

Those who relativize the belief that it would be wrong to make the time of receiving Holy Communion a time of confrontation and discord are guilty of relativizing the objectively based precepts, which are based on Ultimate Truth Himself. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. To relativize or compromise the objectively based precepts is to directly relativize Truth Himself! [An argument I used elsewhere today to point out that in making Truth expendable through his supposedly merciful sacramental leniencies, JMB has made Christ himself expendable.]

The position of those who are opposed to the implementation of Canon 915 for the reasons just cited is untenable.

First, because most priests have had to refuse Holy Communion to someone at one time or another for reasons having nothing to do with that person’s beliefs. No priest, upon seeing a person standing before him whom he recognizes as having profaned the host on another occasion would give the host to that person again.

Similarly, most priests, on recognizing that the person standing before him is not a Christian, would not give that person Holy Communion but would simply give the person a blessing and ask the person to see him after Mass. To do otherwise in either case would gravely scandalize the congregation.

Some have indicated their unwillingness to act under the provisions of Canon 915 because they say that they are not in a position to judge another person’s thinking or conscience on the subject of abortion, euthanasia and fetal experimentation.

This is another example of relativizing the precepts or emptying them of their substance. This is another example of attacking the Truth Himself, Who is the objective foundation for these precepts, and Who IS the Holy Communion being attacked!

"….when you hear Me say anything, you shall warm them for me. If I tell the wicked man that he shall surely die, and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked man from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked man, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself" (Ezekiel 33:7-9).

The Pontifical Council clearly stated that:
"The phrase ‘and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin’ is clear and must be understood in a manner that does not distort its sense so as to render the norm inapplicable. The three required conditions are:
a) grave sin, understood objectively, being that the minister of communion would not be able to judge from subjective imputability;
b) obstinate persistence, which means the existence of an objective situation of sin that endures in time and which the will of the individual member of the faithful does not bring to an end, no other requirements (attitude of defiance, prior warning, etc.) being necessary to establish the fundamental gravity of the situation in the Church.
c) The manifest character of the situation of grave habitual sin."

There can be no doubting that most of the major political figures who are on record publicly as favoring abortion-on-demand, euthanasia, cloning or fetal experimentation qualify under those three conditions for censure.

They qualify for being denied Holy Communion because they have a direct impact on the moral or immoral structure of a government, inasmuch as they are the direct agents in matters pertaining to legislation which forms a structure of sin, or a structure of goodness.

It is true that the Pontifical Council stated that: "Naturally, pastoral prudence would strongly suggest (emphasis added) the avoidance of instances of public denial of Holy Communion." Those who seize upon this statement to justify their refusal to act under the provisions of Canon 915 relativize the Canon and rob it of all its force. Note that the Pontifical Council used the word suggest rather than the word demand.

Prudence as defined by Aristotle is the virtue which deals with contingency and gray areas (cf., Nicomachean Ethics 1144a-1145a). What prudence strongly suggests in one contingent scenario might be totally different from another contingent scenario. In an ideal world, we would always avoid confrontational instances. We are obviously not in an ideal world.

There is no need for public denial of Holy Communion. There is no need to reduce the need for public denial of Holy Communion to the worst case scenario: the minister of Holy Communion loudly refusing to give the Host to a loudly protesting pro-abortion politician in front of a church full of people. The implementation of Canon 915 can be carried out in complete privacy and confidentiality.

Here is a real case history of implementation of the Church’s prohibition against politicians who are publicly notorious for their promotion of abortion, euthanasia, cloning or fetal experimentation.

In 1993 a State Representative, a member of the House of Representatives of the State of Texas Legislature who maintained a domicile in the Diocese of Corpus Christi, gave an interview to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the major newspaper in South Texas. The paper profiled the State Representative on two full pages.

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times has always been, and remains today, a strongly pro-abortion newspaper. The wife of the founding publisher was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood of Corpus Christi. The paper was eager to reveal to the world that the State Representative, who had voted in the Legislature for pro-abortion legislation was a "practicing Catholic."

In the course of the interview, as reported in the newspaper, the State Representative admitted being a practicing Roman Catholic who felt justified in supporting abortion-on-demand.

Recognizing the scandal to the faithful which the publication of this interview would cause, I realized that it was my duty, as Ordinary of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, to write to the State Representative. I pointed out to the State Representative that grave scandal had been given in that interview. I proposed a meeting to discuss the matter with a view to obtaining a retraction which could be published. Here is the text of that letter:

June 3, 1993

Dear XXXXXXXXXX,

I recently read in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Local News Section (May 20, 1993), a story entitled "Abortion Amendment is Defeated" in which you are quoted as having said that you consider yourself "a very good Catholic." If you are a Catholic I am confident that you will understand that I am writing to you as the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi, and therefore as your pastor.

I am most disturbed to learn about your views regarding abortion. I am writing this letter to offer you an explanation why no Catholic can be for abortion in any manner and be a Catholic in good standing. The arguments against abortion can be seen from two perspectives, from natural law and from faith. Natural law refers to the fact that when God created us, he made unwritten laws which bind all human beings in virtue of our nature regardless of any particular beliefs they may have. From natural law we have the norm "Thou shalt not kill" which is binding upon all citizens in any human society.

This norm of natural law respects all innocent human beings from the moment of their conception in the womb of their mothers to the time of their natural death. Medical science is very clear in showing that the origin of each human being in the womb of his/her mother is the moment of conception. After conception normal development occurs until the baby is actually born. Therefore from the perspective of natural law abortion is a grievous offense against this norm which binds all human beings.

But we Christians have an even greater responsibility to respect human life from conception until natural death. Our faith sheds additional light on this issue. I am speaking now of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We are told in the Scriptures that when the angel Gabriel came to Mary, she conceived of Jesus Christ and the Word became flesh. In other words, Jesus Christ became man from the moment of His conception in His mother’s womb. As Christians we proclaim the truth in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus Christ our Savior became man when he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

He did not become man when he was born, but when he was conceived in the womb of Mary. And if this is true of Jesus, Lord and Savior of the human race, then clearly it is true of every human being who God creates through conception in the womb of its mother. The Church has always taught that Jesus was like us in every way but sin. We even have a feast day we celebrate in the Catholic Church to proclaim that Jesus became man at the moment of Gabriel’s greeting and Mary’s response. This feast is called the Annunciation and it celebrates the fact that God became man at the Annunciation.

(Here followed a paragraph devoted to the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth).

(Here followed a paragraph devoted to teaching that "…no Catholic man or woman can say ‘I believe that a woman has a right to chose to kill the baby in her womb.’)

I realize that civil law can go against God’s law. This was a problem for the early Church when Christians were willing to die at the hands of the Roman state rather than disobey God’s laws. As Catholics we know that God’s law is to be followed even when civil law fails to recognize it or even legislates against it. God’s law expressed through the Bible and in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church has a greater value than civil law. This is particularly true of God’s law concerning abortion.

(Here followed a paragraph explaining that abortion is a mortal sin and that automatic excommunication from the Church immediately befalls anyone directly procuring an abortion.)

(Here followed eight paragraphs further detailing the Church’s teaching on the subject of the sacredness of human life.)

In light of the important teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on human life beginning at conception, I would like to meet with you personally about this issue. The position which you presented in the Caller-Times as a "Catholic" is contrary to the teachings of Jesus as expressed in His Church. As Bishop of this Diocese and the Shepherd of the souls entrusted to my care by the Lord and by the successor of Saint Peter, I have the responsibility to resolve this serious scandal which your public position on abortion has created.

I will be looking forward to visiting with you about this matter. Please call my office (XXX-XXX-XXXX) and ask for an appointment to meet with me.

Sincerely in Christ,

Most Reverend Rene Gracida
Bishop of Corpus Christi

There was no response to this letter.

On Sunday, January 30, 1994, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times published another interview with the State Representative in which it was stated that the Representative, "a devout Catholic" had not backed away from advocacy of abortion rights. On February 4, 1994 I sent the Representative the following letter:

Dear XXXXXXXXXX

I am writing concerning the article entitled "Upbringing Shaped XXXXX’s Career" on the front page of the Sunday edition of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times dated January 30, 1994. I am most distressed that the article notes "XXXXX, a devout Catholic, has not backed away from advocacy of abortion rights." If the article accurately states your beliefs and your status as a Catholic, then I am confident that you will understand that I am writing to you again as the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi, and therefore as your pastor.

My earlier letter to you dated June 3, 1993 was a teaching letter explaining why no Catholic can be for abortions and be in good standing in the Catholic Church before the eyes of God. In my earlier letter, I had asked you to see me about your views, but I never received a response from you.

I regret that now I am compelled by the pastoral good of the local Church and for the salvation of souls to take the followings actions. I am attaching to this letter a copy of the teaching letter I wrote to you on June 3, 1993. Secondly, I am writing to inform you that your public position for abortion is in violation of Canon 1371 which forbids any Catholic to teach a doctrine condemned by the Roman Pontiff or by an ecumenical council. Both Pope John Paul II and the Second Vatican Council have condemned abortion as a grievous offense against the law of God. Thirdly, I am by this letter giving you a formal warning according to Church law that unless you repent of your position, I will have no other choice for the good of the Catholic Church and for the salvation of souls to impose the penalty of forbidding you from receiving the sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick.

As Bishop of this Diocese and the Shepherd of the souls entrusted to my care by the Lord and by the successor of Saint Peter, I have the responsibility to resolve this serious scandal which your public position on abortion has created.

I pray that God will give you the grace to repent and retract your advocacy of abortion. I do want to hear from you about this matter. Please call my office (XXX-XXX-XXXX) and ask for an appointment to meet with me.

Sincerely in Christ,

Most Reverend Rene Gracida
Bishop of Corpus Christi

Again, there was not response from the State Representative. Accordingly, On November 9, 1994 I signed and mailed to the State Representative the following decree of Interdiction:

DECREE OF CANONICAL PENALTY

In the name of God, Amen!
His Holiness John Paul II, Supreme Pontiff, Gloriously Reigning

I, Rene H. Gracida, Bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, am issuing this decree to you, XXXXXXXX, concerning the matter of your advocacy of "abortion rights" as reported in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times dated May 20, 1993 and January 30, 1994. I am distressed that you have not responded to my two letter dated June 3, 1993 and February 7, 1994 (copies of which are attached to this letter). My letter to you dated June 3, 1993, was a teaching letter explaining why no Catholic can advocate abortions and be in good standing in the Catholic Church. My letter dated February 7, 1994, was a pastoral warning, asking you again to meet with me and calling you to repent and retract your advocacy of abortion. To both of these letters, I have never received a response from you.

As Bishop of this Diocese and the Shepherd of the entrusted to my care by the Lord and by the successor of Saint Peter, I have the responsibility to resolve this serious scandal which your public position on abortion has created. Having failed to obtain a retraction from you, I regret that now I am compelled by the pastoral good of the local Church and for the salvation of souls to take the following action.

In virtue of the fact that your promotion of abortion is in violation of Canon 1371 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and in virtue of the fact that Pope John Paul II and the Second Vatican Council have condemned abortion as a grievous offense against the law of God and in virtue of the fact that you have not responded to my two letters nor made known to me any intention or effort to repent and retract your advocacy of abortion, I, as Bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, have no choice but, by this letter, to formally impose upon you the penalty of forbidding you to receive the sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick.

I continue to pray that God will give you the grace to repent and retract your advocacy of abortion. If you come to a change of heart on this matter, please call my office (XXX-XXX-XXXX) and ask for an appoint to meet with me. It is with deep sadness and with much regret that I am required for the good name and pastoral well being of the Catholic Church to affix my signature to this decree, on this the Seventh Day of November 1994.

(sig)
Rene Henry Gracida
Bishop of Corpus Christi

(sig)
Reverend Deacon Roy M. Grassedonio
Chancellor

I never heard from the individual, who died in 2001, while still under Interdiction. I never publicized the Decree of Interdiction. It was a matter between me, the individual and God.

Whether or not the individual ever received Holy Communion after having been Interdicted, I do not know, and it is not important that I should have known since it was a matter of the internal forum. If the individual did receive Holy Communion while under a Decree of Interdiction it would have been a further sacrilege.

Some will argue that the Decree of Interdiction should have been made public at the time it was issued. I disagree. The Corpus Christi Caller-Times would have exploited the news just as they had exploited the three Decrees of Excommunication I had earlier issued against three abortionists in Corpus Christi who chose to make their excommunication known publicly.

If it had been reported to me that the individual was receiving Holy Communion after receiving the Decree of Interdiction I would have published the decree in the Diocesan Newspaper.

In summary, every bishop has the duty and obligation to implement the provisions of Canon Law in accordance with the Declaration by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. There is no need for confrontation at the altar rail during the distribution of Holy Communion. The Canons can be implemented without public confrontation at the time Holy Communion is being distributed.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 24 settembre 2016 01:40
JMB's assault on the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues apace. Leaving aside for now all his casuistries to justify his seemingly blanket policy of sacramental leniency - i.e., virtually abandoning the Church's well-established practices concerning the 'discipline of the sacraments' - he has openly advocated the unconditional abolition of the death penalty, and now he wants the Church to abandon the theory of 'just war'. Never mind that the greatest minds of the Church have taken turns through the centuries at explaining why the death penalty and just war are sometimes necessary and inevitable. JMB seems to think he is a far more accomplished theologian and thinker than Augustine or Aquinas...

How convenient that his putative choice to become Prefect of the CDF is the treasonous Cardinal Schoenborn! I use 'treasonous' relative to what the Archbishop of Vienna was thought to have represented in the past, namely Catholic orthodoxy - for which Cardinal Ratzinger named him in the mid-1980s to chair the commission that drafted the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992. Since then, of course, even before this pontificate, Schoenborn began to openly violate the precepts in the Catechism he helped draft, with his public position supporting homosexual unions, in which formally he is several steps ahead of his new master Jorge 'Who am I to judge' Bergoglio, to whose drumbeat he has been marching energetically since March 13, 2013.

The Spanish website RELIGION DIGITAL which has become a reliable bellwether and proud chronicler on what's up with the church of Bergoglio led me to this NCReporter interview with Cardinal Turkson, the Ghanaian cardinal who has become more Bergoglian than Bergoglio:

Cardinal Turkson:
"The pope wants the Church to
abandon the 'just war' theory"
by Joshua J. McElwee

Sept. 20, 2016

Vatican City - Pope Francis is giving "very strong recognition" to a landmark conference held at the Vatican last spring that called on the global Catholic church to reject its long-held teachings on just war theory, Cardinal Peter Turkson has said.

Turkson, the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the pontiff's decision to focus his message for World Peace Day in 2017 on nonviolent strategies to prevent and stop global violence was partly caused by the discussions at the conference.

'Non-violence: A political style for peace' will be the title of Pope Francis's message for the Catholic World Day for Peace on January 1, 2017. [I hope JMB will not claim originality for this as he has with his other 'revolutionary innovations'. Mahatma Gandhi initiated the whole non-violence movement as we know it back in the early 20th century, applying both the long history of non-violence in Indian religious thought, and contemporary influences like Tolstoy with whom he had an exchange of correspondence about the topic. Gandhi became the first to employ it politically when he assumed leadership of the Indian movement for independence from British rule. Contemporary advocates of non-violence and its corollary action, civil disobedience, include Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King Jr and Cesar Chavez.]

"He's adopted this topic … as the message of peace for next year," said Turkson, referring to Francis. "We are giving a very strong recognition to the conference and to the things that were discussed and said there."

The cardinal was speaking in an NCR interview Monday in response to a question about the April event, which was co-hosted by his council and the Catholic peace group Pax Christi International.

Turkson said the participants of the conference asked the church to re-examine the concept of just war, first enunciated by fourth-century bishop St. Augustine, and "slightly begin to move away from that."

He said that while just war teachings were first developed to make wars difficult or impossible to justify, they are now used more as conditions that allow violence to be used.

"My understanding is that it was initially meant to make it difficult to wage war because you needed to justify it," said the cardinal. "This now has been interpreted these days as a war is just when it is exercised in self-defense … or to put off an aggressor or to protect innocent people."

Turkson continued: "In that case, Pope Francis would say: 'You don't stop an aggression by being an aggressor. You don't stop a conflict by inciting another conflict. You don't stop a war by starting another war.'"

"It doesn't stop," said the cardinal. "We've seen it all around us. Trying to stop the aggressor in Iraq has not stopped war. Trying to stop the aggressor in Libya has not stopped war. It's not stopped the war in any place. We do not stop war by starting another war."

Turkson said the participants at the conference promoted "another thinking: "Gospel nonviolence, or "nonviolence as Jesus was nonviolent."

"People think that this is Utopian, but Jesus was that,"[Perhaps Turkson should consult the dictionary to find out exactly what 'utopian' means!] said the cardinal, calling Jesus's instruction to his disciples to turn the other cheek if someone were to strike them as an example of "non-aggression" in response to violence.

"From the point of view of us Christians, and talking as Christians, our master also taught us a way of dealing with violence," said Turkson. "Is it worth following what our master taught us? What he taught us is this nonviolence."

The Vatican conference on just war theory was held April 11-13 and brought some 80 experts engaged in nonviolent struggles to Rome to discuss developing a new moral framework rejecting ethical justifications for war. At the end of the event the participants launched an appeal, bluntly stating: "There is no 'just war.'"

The Vatican announced in August that Francis' World Peace Day message for 2017, which will be officially promulgated on the first day of the year, will be given the title "Non-Violence: A Style of Politics for Peace."

Turkson, who spoke about the April event in the context of a 40-minute interview at his council's office in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood, also said that international responses to unjust aggression by nation-states or other actors do not always need to involve violence.

"There are several diplomatic means we can use to stop aggression" [Really??? How has that worked out with ISIS and all the assorted Muslim jihadists who constitute the only real and significant casus belli in our day? What techniques of non-violence could stop jihad??? Shouldn't the interviewer have asked Turkson this right away?], said the cardinal.

"If nothing else at all, stop that with which people cause the aggression. Why don't you talk about curtailing arms trafficking? The really big instruments of war come from factories and industries which produce weapons and some of these weapons are now in these theatres of war." [And there goes the Vatican's most insufferably unctuous Bergoglio mini-me citing chapter and verse from his master's preposterous script on what causes war! Antonio Socci recently likened JMB's blaming the 'arms industries' for wars, to Woody Allen's quip that "Psychoanalysis is a myth kept alive by the couch manufacturing industry". Except that Allen was being humorous, whereas JMB and is acolytes are dead serious about this 'theory' on the ultimate cause of wars! If any other world leader had said what Bergoglio and Turkson are blathering on about, he would have been ridiculed by all. But virtually everyone chooses to ignore it when it is JMB who says inanities and insanities!]

As an example, Turkson spoke of the weapons used by the terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, asking: "Who makes them available?" [Turkson and his master appear to forget that the dissolution of the Soviet Empire let loose upon the world an untold and uncatalogued quantity of arms and weapons materiel, ranging from the conventional to the nuclear, out on the black market, available to whoever has money; and that Pakistan, the world's second most populous Muslim country, has flirted with providing nuclear capability to terrorists even as it has provided technical knowhow and materiel to countries like North Korea and Iran in their nuclear weapons programs. The weaponry that ISIS and the other jihadists deploy is not ordered by them from arms manufacturers - they get it from black marketeers who are very resourceful at keeping their inventories full.]

"There are people making money on the trafficking of weapons," said the cardinal. [Of course, that is what they are in business for. But they are not the arms manufacturers who, in relative times of peace (when there is not a conventional world war actually taking place), sell arms to civilian society for self protection and for hunting, and to local police forces and to national armed forces who require weapons to carry out their duties. There is not a single legitimate arms manufacturer in the world who is taking orders for weapons directly from the protagonists of the various civil conflicts now going on - whose arms come either from the national armies they are fighting for or even fighting against, and from the blackmarketeers who thrive on asymmetric wars like those waged by ISIS, Al-Qeda, the Taliban and Boko Haram.]

Turkson, a native Ghanaian, was recently appointed by Francis to lead a new Vatican office streamlining the church's worldwide efforts on justice, peace, charity, healthcare and migration.

The office, to be called the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and coming into function Jan. 1, will combine the work of four pontifical councils, including the peace and justice council.

'JUST WAR'
in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Articles 2302-2317


2302 By recalling the commandment, "You shall not kill," [Mt. 5:21] our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral.

Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice." [St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II q158, a1 ad3]

If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. The Lord says, "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment." [Mt. 5:22]

2303 Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." [Mt. 5:44-45]

2304 Respect for and development of human life require peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is "the tranquility of order." [St. Augustine, City of God 19, 13,1] Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity. [Cf. Is. 32:17; cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes #78, 1-2]

2305 Earthly peace is the image and fruit of the peace of Christ, the messianic "Prince of Peace." [Is. 9:5] By the blood of his Cross, "in his own person he killed the hostility," [Eph. 2:16; cf. Col. 1:20-22] he reconciled men with God and made his Church the sacrament of the unity of the human race and of its union with God. "He is our peace." [Eph. 2:14] He has declared: "Blessed are the peacemakers." [Mt. 5:9]

2306 Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death. [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 78, 5]

Avoiding war
2307 The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war. [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 81, 4] All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.

However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed." [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 79, 4]

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

2310 Public authorities, in this case, have the right and duty to impose on citizens the obligations necessary for national defense.

Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace.[Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 79, 5]

2311 Public authorities should make equitable provision for those who for reasons of conscience refuse to bear arms; these are nonetheless obliged to serve the human community in some other way. [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 79, 3]

2312 The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties." [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 79, 4]

2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.

Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out. Thus the extermination of a people, nation, or ethnic minority must be condemned as a mortal sin. One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide.

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation." [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 80, 3]

A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons - especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

2315 The accumulation of arms strikes many as a paradoxically suitable way of deterring potential adversaries from war. They see it as the most effective means of ensuring peace among nations. This method of deterrence gives rise to strong moral reservations.

The arms race does not ensure peace. Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce ever new types of weapons impedes efforts to aid needy populations; [Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio 53] it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation.

2316 The production and the sale of arms affect the common good of nations and of the international community. Hence public authorities have the right and duty to regulate them. The short-term pursuit of private or collective interests cannot legitimate undertakings that promote violence and conflict among nations and compromise the international juridical order.

2317 Injustice, excessive economic or social inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging among men and nations constantly threaten peace and cause wars. Everything done to overcome these disorders contributes to building up peace and avoiding war:

Insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until Christ comes again; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and these words will be fulfilled: "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." [Cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 78, 6; cf. Is. 2:4]

TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 25 settembre 2016 20:28




ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



I take the opportunity of the page change to apologize for having been 'inactive' all day Saturday, and it is propitious that I begin this page with the final installment of the most detailed "We accuse..." presented so far in a single statement against the un-Catholic and anti-Catholic actions and statements of the current pope.






One must note that the title of this 'charge sheet' against Jorge Mario Bergoglio acting as pope and nominal leader of the Roman Catholic
Church is the English translation of the title of Pius XI's encyclical against Nazism Mit brennender Sorge.

Here is Part III of the three-part charge sheet against JMB/Pope Francis by The Remnant and Catholic Family News....

With Burning Concern:

We Accuse Pope Francis..

Part II of III
A joint statement by
and

Written by Michael Matt, Christopher Ferrara & John Vennari
Sept. 23, 2016
LIBER OF ACCUSATION - Part III

A “pastoral practice” at war with doctrine
You have approved as the only correct interpretation of Amoris a moral calculus that would in practice undermine the whole moral order, not just the norms of sexual morality you obviously seek to subvert.

For the application of virtually any moral norm can be deemed “unfeasible” by a talismanic invocation of “complex circumstances” to be “discerned” by a priest or bishop in “pastoral practice” while the norm is piously defended as unchanged and unchangeable as a “general rule.”

The nebulous criterion of “limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability” could be applied to all manner of habitual mortal sin, including cohabitation — which you have already likened to “true marriage” — “homosexual unions” — whose legalization you have refused to oppose — and contraception, which, incredibly, you have declared is morally permissible in order to prevent the transmission of disease, which the Vatican later confirmed is in fact your view.

Thus the Church would “in certain cases” contradict in practice what she teaches in principle regarding morality, meaning that the moral principle is practically overthrown.

In the midst of the synodal sham, but without mentioning you, Cardinal Robert Sarah rightly condemned such a specious disjunction between moral precepts and their “pastoral application”: “The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice — which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions — is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology.”

Yet, as you would have it, based on “discernment” by local priests or ordinaries, certain people living in an objective condition of adultery can be deemed subjectively inculpable and admitted to Holy Communion without any commitment to an amendment of life even though they know the Church teaches that their relationship is adulterous.

In a recent interview, the renowned Austrian philosopher Josef Seifert, a friend of Pope John Paul II and one of the many critics of Amoris whose private entreaties for correction or retraction of the document you have ignored, has publicly noted the moral and pastoral absurdity of what you now explicitly approve:
How should that be applied? Should the priest say to one adulterer: 'You are a good adulterer. You are in the state of grace. You are a very pious person, so you get my absolution without changing your life and you can go to Holy Communion.' And in comes another, and he [the priest] says: 'Oh, you are a real adulterer. You must first confess. You must revoke your life. You must change your life and then you can go to Communion'.

I mean, how should that work?.... How can a priest be a judge of the soul [and] say that one is a real sinner and the other is only an innocent, good man? I mean that seems completely impossible. Only a priest who would have a kind of Padre Pio vision of souls could possibly say that, and he [Padre Pio] wouldn’t say that…."

With your praise and approval, the bishops of Buenos Aires even suggest that children will be harmed if their divorced and “remarried” parents are not permitted to continue engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage while they profane the Blessed Sacrament.

One casuitical defender of your departure from sound teaching surmises that this means adultery is only a venial sin if one partner in adultery is under “duress” to continue engaging in adulterous sexual relations because the other partner threatens to leave the children unless he is given sexual satisfaction.

According to that moral logic, any mortal sin, including abortion, would be rendered venial merely by one party’s threat to end an adulterous relationship if the sin is not committed.

Even worse, it that were possible, the bishops of Buenos Aires, relying solely on your novelties, dare to suggest that people who continue habitually to engage in adulterous sexual relations will grow in grace while sacrilegiously receiving Holy Communion.

You have thus contrived no mere “change of discipline” but rather a radical change of underlying moral doctrine that would effectively institutionalize a form of situation ethics in the Church, reducing universally binding, objective moral precepts to mere general rules from which there would be innumerable subjective “exceptions” based on “complex circumstances” and “limitations” that would supposedly reduce habitual mortal sins to venial sins or even mere faults posing no impediment to Holy Communion.

But God Incarnate admitted of no such “exceptions” when He decreed by His divine authority: “Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery (Lk 16:18).” Every one.

Moreover, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II declared in rejecting the “Kasper proposal” that has clearly been your proposal all along: “This norm [excluding public adulterers from the sacraments] is not at all a punishment or a discrimination against the divorced and remarried, but rather expresses an objective situation that of itself renders impossible the reception of Holy Communion.”

That is, the Church can never permit those living in adultery to be treated as if their immoral unions were valid marriages, even if the partners in adultery implausibly claim subjective inculpability while knowingly living in violation of the Church’s infallible teaching. For the resulting scandal would erode and ultimately ruin the faith of the people in both the indissolubility of marriage and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

With your full approval, however, the bishops of Buenos Aires have rejected John Paul II’s admonition in Familiaris consortio that “if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.”

At this very moment in Church history, therefore, you are leading the faithful “into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.” Indeed, so determined are you to impose your errant will upon the Church that in Amoris (n. 303) you dared to suggest that God Himself condones the continued sexual relations of the divorced and “remarried” if they can do no better in their “complex” circumstances:
"Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal"(AL 303)

In explicitly approving Holy Communion for select public adulterers in your letter to Buenos Aires you also undermine the ability of more conservative bishops to maintain the Church’s traditional teaching.
- How can bishops in America, Canada and Poland, for example, continue to insist on the Church’s bimillenial discipline, intrinsically connected to revealed truth, when you have dispensed with it in Buenos Aires on the authority of your “apostolic exhortation”?
- On what ground will they stand against a swarm of objections now that you have removed the ground of Tradition from beneath their feet?

In sum, after years of artful ambiguity regarding the standing of public adulterers with respect to Confession and Holy Communion, you now just as artfully declare the purported overthrow of the Church’s doctrine and practice by employing a “confidential” letter you must have known would be leaked, sent in response to a document from Buenos Aires you may well have solicited as part of the process you have been guiding since the sham “Synod on the Family” was announced.

As the Catholic intellectual and author Antonio Socci has written: “It is the first time in the history of the Church that a Pope has placed his signature on an overturning of the moral law.” No previous Pope has ever perpetrated such an outrage.

“Exceptions” to the moral law cannot be confined
Curiously enough, however, your novel moral calculus does not seem to apply to the other sins you constantly condemn while carefully observing the bounds of political correctness.

Nowhere, for example, do you indicate that “complex circumstances” or “limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability” would excuse the Mafiosi you have rhetorically “excommunicated” en masse and warned of Hell, the rich you condemn as “bloodsuckers” or even the observant Catholics you ludicrously accuse of “the sin of divination” and “the sin of idolatry” because they will not accept “the surprises of God” — meaning your novelties.

Your entire pontificate seems to have centered on declaring an amnesty for sins of the flesh only, the very sins that, as Our Lady of Fatima warned, send more souls to hell than any other. [Let me interpose Fr. Hunwicke's logical challenge to Bergoglian mercy: And what about the priests who have been and are sexual offenders, assuming they become truly contrite?]

But what makes you think the moral genie you have let out of the bottle, which you call the “God of surprises,” can be confined only to those moral precepts you deem overly rigid in application? To create exceptions to one exceptionless moral precept is effectively to undo them all.

Your novelty attacks the foundations of the Faith and threatens to topple the Church’s entire moral edifice “like a house of cards” — the very outcome you accused observant Catholics of promoting on account of their supposed “rigorism” and attachment to “small-minded rules.”

But you are heedless of such obvious consequences. When asked about your approach to opposition from “ultra-conservatives,” meaning orthodox bishops and cardinals, you replied with the insouciant arrogance that is a hallmark of your governance of the Church: “They do their job and I do mine. I want a Church that is open, understanding, that accompanies wounded families. They say no to everything. I go ahead, without looking over my shoulder.”

In an astonishing display of haughty contempt for the Church of which you were elected head, you have dared to say: “the Church herself sometimes follows a hard line, she falls into the temptation of following a hard line, into the temptation of stressing only the moral rules, many people are excluded.”

Never before has a Pope declared that he will personally remedy the Church’s lack of openness and understanding and her “temptation” to take a “hard line” on morality so as to “exclude” people. Such alarmingly hubristic pronouncements give rise to the distinct impression that your unexpected election represents an almost apocalyptic development.

Ignoring all entreaties,
you forge ahead with your 'revolution'
As you have gone about your work of destruction, you have ignored every private entreaty addressed to you, including innumerable requests that you affirm that Amoris Laetitia does not depart from prior teaching, as well as a document prepared by a group of Catholic scholars who identified heretical and erroneous propositions in Amoris and pleaded with you to condemn and withdraw them.

It is evident you have no intention of accepting fraternal correction from anyone, not even the cardinals who have requested that you “clarify” the conformity of your teaching with the infallible Magisterium.

On the contrary, the more alarmed the faithful become, the more boldly you act. Continuing your programmatic loosening in practice of the Church’s moral teaching concerning sexuality, you have authorized the Pontifical Council for the Family to publish the first classroom “sex education” program ever promulgated by the Holy See. [Strategically debuting on and distributed in the millions at World Youth Day 2016]

One of the associations of lay faithful that has risen to defend the Faith in the face of the hierarchy’s general silence before your onslaught of dissolvent novelties has published a summary of this horrific curriculum, which blatantly violates the Church’s constant teaching against any form of explicit classroom “sex-education”:
• Handing the sexual formation of children over to educators while leaving parents out of the equation.
• Failing to name and condemn sexual behaviors, such as fornication, prostitution, adultery, contracepted-sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation, as objectively sinful actions that destroy charity in the heart and turn one away from God.
• Failing to warn youths about the possibility of eternal separation from God (damnation) for committing grave sexual sins. Hell is not mentioned once.
• Failing to distinguish between mortal and venial sin.
• Failing to speak about the 6th and 9th commandments, or any other commandment.
• Failing to teach about the sacrament of confession as a way of restoring relationship with God after committing grave sin.
• Not mentioning a healthy sense of shame when it comes to the body and sexuality.
• Teaching boys and girls together in the same class.
• Having boys and girls share together in class their understanding of phrases such as: “What does the word sex suggest to you?”
• Asking a mixed class to “point out where sexuality is located in boys and girls.”
• Speaking about the “process of arousal.”
• Using sexually explicit and suggestive images in activity workbooks.
• Recommending various sexually explicit movies as springboards for discussion….
• Failing to speak about abortion as gravely wrong, but only that it causes “strong psychological damage.”
• Confusing youths by using phrases such as “sexual relationship” to indicate not the sexual act, but a relationship focused on the whole person.
• Speaking of “heterosexuality” as something to be “discover[ed].”
• Using [a “gay” celebrity] as an example of a gifted and famous person.
• Endorsing the “dating” paradigm as a step towards marriage.
• Not stressing celibacy as the supreme form of self-giving that constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality.
• Failing to mention Christ’s teaching on marriage.

The same association observes that the curriculum “violates norms previously promulgated by the very same pontifical council.”

Another lay association protests that it “makes frequent use of sexually explicit and morally objectionable images, fails to clearly identify and explain Catholic doctrine from elemental sources including the Ten Commandments and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and compromises the innocence and integrity of young people under the rightful care of their parents.”

Lay leaders in the Catholic family movement have rightly denounced it as “thoroughly immoral,” “entirely inappropriate,” and “quite tragic.” As one of them declared: “Parents must not be under any illusion: the pontificate of Pope Francis marks the surrender of the Vatican authorities to the worldwide sexual revolution and directly threatens their own children.”

But this radical departure from prior teaching and practice is only in keeping with the novelties of Amoris, which proclaims “the need for sex education” in “educational institutions” while completely ignoring the Church’s traditional teaching that parents, not teachers in classrooms, have the primary responsibility to provide any necessary instruction to their children in this most sensitive area, taking care not to “descend to details” but rather to “employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.”

Your “revolution” is hardly confined to matters sexual, however. You have also recently convened a commission, including six women, to “study” the matter of women “deacons,” which was already studied by a Vatican commission in 2002.

That commission concluded that the diaconate belongs to the ordained clerical state along with the priesthood and the episcopacy and that so-called “deaconesses” in the early Church were not ordained ministers but only ecclesial helpers with no more authority than nuns, who performed limited services for women, but certainly not baptisms or marriages. The “deaconettes” you seem to contemplate would thus be nothing more than women masquerading in clerical garb, as women cannot possibly receive any degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

As you continue to undermine respect for the utter seriousness and supernatural character of sacramental marriage it seems you are preparing to undermine further an already drastically diminished respect for the male priesthood. What is next? Perhaps a “relaxation” of the apostolic tradition of clerical celibacy, which you have already declared is “on my agenda.”

And now, as your “revolution” continues to accelerate, you prepare to depart for Sweden in October, where you will participate in a joint “prayer service” with a married Lutheran [female] “bishop,” head of the pro-abortion, pro-“gay marriage” Lutheran World Federation, to “commemorate” the so-called Reformation launched by Martin Luther.

It is [WAS, before March 13, 2013] inconceivable that a Roman Pontiff would dignify the memory of this maniac, the most destructive heretic in the history of the Church, who shattered the unity of Christendom and opened the way to endless violence and bloodshed and the collapse of morals throughout Europe.

As Luther infamously declared: “If I succeed in doing away with the Mass, then I shall believe I have completely conquered the Pope. If the sacrilegious and cursed custom of the Mass is overthrown, then the whole will fall.”

It is supremely ironic that the arch-heretic you intend to honor with your presence uttered those words in a letter to Henry VIII, who led all of England into schism because the Pope would not accommodate his desire for divorce and “remarriage,” including access to the sacraments.

We must oppose you
At this point in your tumultuous tenure as “Bishop of Rome” it is beyond reasonable dispute that your presence on the Chair of Peter represents a clear and present danger to the Church.

In view of that danger, we must ask:
- Are you not in the least troubled by the scandal and confusion your words and deeds have caused concerning the salvific mission of the Church and her teaching on faith and morals?
- Does it never occur to you that the world’s endless applause for “the Francis revolution” is precisely the ill omen of which Our Lord gave warning?: “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for in the same manner did their fathers to the false prophets" (Lk 6:26).
- Have you no sense of alarm about the divisions you have provoked within the Church, with some bishops departing from the teaching of your predecessors on the divorced and “remarried,” solely on your purported authority, while others attempt to maintain the bimillenial doctrine and practice you have labored without ceasing to overthrow?
- Do you think nothing of the numberless sacrilegious communions that will result from your authorization of Holy Communion for objective public adulterers and others in “irregular situations,” which you had already permitted en masse as Archbishop of Buenos Aires?
- Do you even recognize that reception of Holy Communion by people living in adultery is a profanation, a direct offense against “the Body of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:29) worthy of damnation as well as a public scandal that threatens the faith of others, as both Benedict XVI and John Paul II insisted in line with all their predecessors?
- Do you really think you have the power to decree “merciful” exceptions in “certain cases” to divinely revealed moral precepts in order to suit your personal notion of “inclusion,” your evidently benign view of divorce and cohabitation and your false notion of what you call “pastoral charity” in your letter to the bishops of Buenos Aires? As if it were uncharitable to require adulterers and fornicators to cease their immoral sexual relations before partaking of the Blessed Sacrament!
- Have you no respect for the contrary teaching of all the Popes who preceded you?
- Finally, have you no fear of the Lord and His judgment, which you constantly minimize or deny in your sermons and spontaneous remarks, even declaring — exactly contrary to the Creed — that the Good Shepherd… seeks not to judge but to love”?

[Obviously, from Bergoglio's record of the past three years and 185 days, his answer to all the above except question 6 would be a resounding NO, otherwise he would not have said and done what he has said and done so far. Question 6 is a YES, he does think, with unparalleled hubris, that he has the power - and the authority - of the duly elected Bishop of Rome, Successor to Peter, to say and do all that he has done, is doing and will do against the One True Church of Christ, that he obsessively believes he can improve by erecting the church of Bergoglio in its place - in effect, that in the ways he has already acted so far, he really thinks he can do better than Jesus himself!]

We must agree with the assessment of the aforementioned Catholic journalist concerning your insane pursuit of Holy Communion for people in immoral sexual relationships: “This whole affair is bizarre. No other word will do.”

Beyond this, however, your entire bizarre pontificate has given rise to a situation the Church has never seen before: an occupant of the Chair of Peter whose remarks, pronouncements and decisions are blows to the Church’s integrity against which the faithful must constantly guard themselves.

As the same writer concludes: “I say this in sorrow, but I’m afraid that the rest of this papacy is now going to be rent by bands of dissenters, charges of papal heresy, threats of – and perhaps outright – schism. Lord, have mercy.”

Yet almost the entire hierarchy either suffers in silence or exultantly celebrates this debacle. But so it was during the great Arian crisis of the 4th century, when, as Cardinal Newman famously observed:
The body of the episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; [and] at one time the Pope, at other times the patriarchal, metropolitan, and other great sees, at other times general councils, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercellae, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them.

If we are to be faithful to our baptism and our Confirmation oath, we members of the laity, unworthy sinners though we are, cannot remain silent or passive in the face of your depredations.

We are compelled by the dictates of conscience to accuse you publicly before our fellow Catholics as demanded by revealed truth, the divine and natural law, and the ecclesial common good.

To recall the teaching of Saint Thomas cited above, there is no exception for the Pope to the principle of natural justice that subjects may rebuke their superior, even publicly, when there is “imminent danger of scandal concerning faith.” Quite the contrary, reason itself demonstrates that, more than any other prelate, the Pope must be corrected, even by his subjects, should he “stray from the straight path.”

We know that the Church is no mere human institution and that its indefectibility is assured by the promises of Christ. Popes come and go, and the Church will survive even this pontificate.

But we also know that God deigns to work through human instruments and that, over and above the essentials of prayer and penance, He expects from the members of the Church Militant, both clergy and laity, a militant defense of faith and morals against threats from any source — be it even a Pope, as Church history has demonstrated more than once.

For the love of God and the Blessed Virgin, Mother of the Church, whom you profess to revere, we call upon you to recant your errors and undo the immense harm you have caused to the Church, to souls, and to the cause of the Gospel lest you follow the example of Pope Honorius, an aider and abettor of heresy anathematized by an ecumenical council and his own successor, and thus bring down upon yourself “the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

But if you will not relent in the pursuit of your vainglorious “vision” of a more “merciful” and evangelical Church than the one founded by Christ, whose doctrine and discipline you seek to bend to your will, let the cardinals who regret the mistake of electing you honor their blood oaths and at least issue a public demand that you change course or relinquish the office they so improvidently entrusted to you. [That is an appeal just as futile as any appeal to Bergoglio.]

Meanwhile, we are duty bound to oppose your errors according to our own station in the Church and to exhort our fellow Catholics to join in that opposition, using every legitimate means at our disposal to mitigate the harm you seem determined to inflict upon the Mystical Body of Christ. All other recourses having failed, no other way is open to us.

May God have mercy on us, His Holy Church, and on you as its earthly head.

Mary, Help of Christians, Pray for Us!

Do you think any of the courtiers and courtesans (in its original meaning) around JMB would ever make him even aware that this 'Nous accusons...' exists??? It is unlikely that on his own, he would come across all the appeals that have been sent to him online - and reported by some media - so how would he learn about them if no one tells him?

The Vatican press office, which speaks for this pope in a direct and literal sense that was not so under his predecessors, has the best excuse for not ever commenting on these appeals - the object of the appeal does not know about their existence, so commenting on them or reacting to them would imply this pope was aware of these appeals which are really impassioned protests, a cri de coeur emitted daily by those of us Catholics who see what Bergoglio has done and is doing to the Church of Christ.

In short, all the present acts of resistance from the laity and some clergy, even some bishops and cardinals, are, for now, nothing more than concrete steps to go on record that in this decade of the first century of the third Christian millennium, not all Catholics are playing dumb sheep in the flock of a shepherd who is really the Big Bad Wolf in disguise.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 25 settembre 2016 20:57
This is one of those horrific news reports that always get to be grossly under-reported and even ignored... Does the current pope know that the atheist regime he is so publicly courting is carrying out this atrocious practice? But perhaps even if he did, he would include this as among the offenses for which he has explicitly absolved the Communist Chinese leadership for having committed - or presumably, even if they are still committing them - including the killings of millions of citizens in the regime's various purges, 'great leaps forward' and 'cultural revolutions'. (The Bergoglio Vatican's efforts to make nice with China at whatever cost is one of the many Bergoglian novelties that failed to make it to the LIBER OF ACCUSATIONS)...

China’s evil secret:
Forced organ harvesting
by Benedict Rogers

Sept. 22, 2016

‘The scalpel cut into the chest and blood gushed out,” recalled an unnamed policeman in Shenyang, China. “At that time, we had been interrogating and severely torturing her for about a week. She already had countless wounds on her body. We used electrical batons to torture her.”

The policemen described how a secretive government office had sent over two men: one a military surgeon, the other a graduate from a medical university. “No anaesthetics were used. They cut her chest with a knife without shaking hands,” he said.

When the woman, who belonged to the banned Falun Gong movement, shouted out in defiance, the surgeon hesitated. But after a nod from his superior, he continued. “It was extremely horrible,” the policeman said. “I can imitate her scream for you. It sounded like something was being ripped apart.”

Those words rolled across the screen just after the credits at the end of a new film, The Bleeding Edge, to a stunned audience of MPs at Speaker’s House, Westminster, this month. They expose the gruesome practice of forced organ harvesting in China, which the movie depicts. The film features the Chinese-born Canadian actress and Miss World contestant Anastasia Lin, who is leading a global campaign against the practice.

Today in China thousands of prisoners of conscience – potentially including unregistered “house church” Christians – are strapped to operating tables and cut apart by force. Their vital organs are then extracted and sold for use as transplants. In China, surgeons’ scalpels have become weapons of murder and those who wield them have become accomplices to a barbaric trade.

A new report published in June claims that forced organ harvesting is now occurring on a scale far larger than previously imagined. The researchers conducted a meticulous forensic inquiry into the public records of 712 hospitals in China carrying out liver and kidney transplants. They concluded that between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals.

One hospital alone, the Oriental Organ Transplant Centre at the Tianjin First Central Hospital, is performing more than 6,000 transplants a year. China officially claims 10,000 organ transplants per annum, but the authors contend that this is “easily surpassed by just a few hospitals”. The evidence points to what human rights lawyer David Matas called the “mass killing of innocents” in his testimony to the US Congress.

The screening of The Bleeding Edge, hosted by John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, was a significant step forward in an international campaign to bring this evidence to the attention of policy-makers.

Earlier this year Anastasia Lin and the journalist Ethan Gutmann testified at hearings held by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, along with Dr Enver Tohti, an Uighur surgeon who admits to having conducted one operation to forcibly remove organs from a prisoner. “In China, the government does not treat people as human beings,” he said.

The US Congress and the European Parliament have passed resolutions condemning forced organ harvesting in China. On October 11 there will be a debate in the House of Commons. Soon after that the MP Fiona Bruce will table an early day motion calling on the United Nations to conduct an inquiry, and urging Britain to ban citizens from travelling to China for organ transplants (research indicates that some Britons have travelled to China for this purpose).

Campaigners are also urging the Government to gather statistics and ensure transparency around so-called “organ tourism”. They want Britain to consider a travel ban on medical personnel and government officials in China who are directly engaged in organ harvesting.

The Bleeding Edge won an award earlier this year from the Catholic Academy of Communication Professionals, which praised the film for its “artistic achievement” and said it “enriches with a true vision of humanity”. Pope Francis has described the organ trade as “immoral and a crime against humanity”. [Did he say that specifically in relation to China, or was it a generic platitude?]

Catholics in Britain should watch the film and join the campaign to urge our Government to work with others to end this horrific crime.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 25 settembre 2016 21:23


I'm one week late posting this item but it's one that must be included in any day-to-day documentation of the 'Bergoglian crisis' (a term I deliberately use in direct analogy to what the Church has always referred to as the 'Arian crisis')...

Dilution of doctrine
by Ross Douthat

Sept. 17, 2016

Last weekend Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and a churchgoing Catholic, briefly escaped obscurity by telling an audience of L.G.B.T. activists that he expects his church to eventually bless and celebrate same-sex marriages.

In short order his bishop, Francis X. DiLorenzo of Richmond, Va., had a statement out declaring that the Catholic understanding of marriage would remain “unchanged and resolute.”

In a normal moment, it would be the task of this conservative Catholic scribbler to explain why the governor is wrong and the bishop is right, why scripture and tradition make it impossible for Catholicism to simply reinvent its sexual ethics.

But this is not a normal moment in the Catholic Church. As the governor was making his prediction, someone leaked a letter from Pope Francis to the Argentine bishops, praising their openness to allowing some divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive communion.

The “private” letter was the latest move in a papal dance that’s been going on since Francis was elected. The pope clearly wants to admit remarried Catholics to communion, and he tried by hook and crook to get the world’s bishops to agree. But he faced intense resistance from conservatives, who pointed out that this reform risked evacuating the church’s teaching that sacramental marriages are indissoluble and second marriages adulterous.

The conservative resistance couldn’t be overcome directly without courting a true crisis. So Francis has proceeded indirectly, offering studied ambiguity in official publications combined with personal suggestions of where he really stands.

This dance has effectively left Catholicism with two teachings on marriage and the sacraments. The traditional rule is inscribed in the church’s magisterium, and no mere papal note can abrogate it.

But to the typical observer, it’s the Francis position that looks more like the church’s real teaching (He is the pope, after all), even if it’s delivered off the cuff or in footnotes or through surrogates.

That position, more or less, seems to be that second marriages may be technically adulterous, but it’s unreasonable to expect modern people to realize that, and even more unreasonable to expect them to leave those marriages or practice celibacy within them. So the sin involved in a second marriage is often venial not mortal, and not serious enough to justify excluding people of good intentions from the sacraments.

Which brings us back to Tim Kaine’s vision, because it is very easy to apply this modified position on remarriage to same-sex unions. [But from JMB/PF's entire record as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and as pope, the obvious next beneficiaries of formal sacramental leniency from this pope are practising homosexuals, along with unmarried cohabitators. The only question is how he will formally grant this concession - can you see him calling a synod to discuss homosexuals and their lifestyle?]


If relationships the church once condemned as adultery are no longer a major, soul-threatening sin, then why should a committed same-sex relationship be any different? If the church makes post-sexual revolution allowances for straight couples, shouldn’t it make the same ones for people who aren’t even attracted to the opposite sex?

An allowance is not the same thing as a blessing. Under the Francis approach, the church would not celebrate second marriages, and were its logic extended to gay couples there wouldn’t be the kind of active celebration Kaine envisions either.

Instead, the church would keep the traditional teaching on its books, and only marry couples who fit the traditional criteria. But it would also signal approval to any stable relationship (gay or straight, married or cohabiting), treating the letter of the law like the pirate’s code in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies: More what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.

The cleverness of this compromise, in theory, is that it leaves conservative Catholics with that letter to cling to, and with it the belief that the church’s teaching is supernaturally guaranteed. Thus there is no crisis point, and less risk of imitating Anglicanism’s recent schisms.

In the short run this may indeed be clever. (Clearly, conservative bishops have no idea how to handle Francis’s maneuvers.) But how long will liberal Catholics be content with a settlement that still leaves same-sex relationships in a merely-tolerated limbo, and that leaves open the possibility that a new pope — an African conservative, let’s say — might reassert the letter of the law and undo Franciss’ work?

How long can conservative Catholics persist in waiting for such a pope, and in telling one another — as they’ve been doing, rather miserably, of late — to obey the church of 2,000 years rather than the current pontiff?

And how effectively can a church retain the lukewarm or uncertain if it keeps its most controversial teachings while constantly winking to say, “Don’t worry, we don’t actually believe all that?”

This instability makes it unlikely that Pope Francis will be remembered as a great conciliator or unifier. It’s more likely now that his legacy will be either famous or infamous.

If liberal Catholics have read providence’s intentions rightly, he will be the patron saint of all future reformers.

If not, he will join a group even more select than the communion of saints: The list of popes who came close — too close — to teaching something other than the Catholic faith.

Layman Ross Douthat is far more direct and forthright about the objective situation caused in the Church by AL, JMB's most quintessentially divisive action in the Church so far, and one that was obviously long premeditated and then manipulated openly over two years to take on his position on sacramental leniency, and failing that, to force through his position nonetheless, albeit clothed casuistically and ambiguously.

And so I disagree with Fr. Mark Drew of the Catholic Herald, who refers to a tug of war, when what we have is a grossly asymmetrical confrontation in which the pope (Goliath) holds all the authority cards and all the concrete power residing in the Church hierarchy and infrastructure, against a ragtag, virtually leaderless minority (David) whose only strengths are abstract (truth, the faith, orthodoxy) expressible only in words bound to be lost like flotsam and jetsam in the ocean of public consensus reflecting the dominant secular mentality.

The cartoon and the title are both misnamed. The fight is not about AL in particular, because the Catholic minority so passionately opposed to its worst provisions certainly want no part of the document - Bergoglio and his myrmidons can have full possession of it.



Tug of war over Amoris
Catholics are divided over how far Francis wants to change Church teaching
regarding the remarried. But does he even have the authority to do so?

by Fr Mark Drew

Thursday, 22 Sep 2016

When Pope Francis published Amoris Laetitia five months ago, I predicted that the discussion of the document and its implications for Catholic teaching on marriage and the family would be lively and sometimes acrimonious. So it has turned out. [No prediction was needed. It was a foregone conclusion considering the almost three years of papal and Vatican theatricals that had one clear end in mind: extend Jorge Bergoglio's 'communion for everyone' unwritten law in Buenos Aires to the universal Church via papal writ, with, if possible, the backing of not just one but two bishops' synodal assemblies.]

The debate took a fresh turn last week with the publication of theoretically private correspondence between the Pope and the bishops of his native Argentina concerning the interpretation of a central point.

Before looking at the contents of the leaked letters, it may be useful to refresh our memories about Amoris Laetitia and why it is controversial. Vatican documents rarely hold the public’s attention for long – though the number of impassioned pundits seems to have increased during the current papacy.

Early in his pontificate Pope Francis made clear that he wanted the Synod of Bishops – a worldwide body which since Vatican II has met periodically to discuss topical issues – to discuss the place of the family in the world today and its repercussions for the Church. As a sign of the importance of the issue, the debate would take place over two synods in successive years. [That's quite a bit of revisionism of recent history there, Fr. Drew, considering that the first mention JMB ever made of a synod on 'the family' was in response to a question as to what he intended to do about the communion ban for remarried divorcees - which I think was a planted question so he could give the answer he did. Especially since no one thought to ask him "What's to discuss about this when John Paul II already reaffirmed the communion ban very clearly and explicitly in Familiaris consortio?" Well, his handpicked tactician-executor of synodal maneuvers, Cardinal Baldisseri, was to tell us a few months later, when the first synod was first announced (there was only going to be one, an extraordinary synod, but then, what the heck! throw in an ordinary synod as well the following year), that FC was 33 years too old and had to be updated. Code words for "That communion ban has to go", never mind that it was reaffirmed by a saint this current pope had recently canonized!]

It is usual for each synod to be followed by the publication of a “post-synodal exhortation” where the Pope sums up the bishops’ findings and adds reflections of his own. Amoris Laetitia, the exhortation following these two synods, was the longest papal document in history, reflecting the complexity of the issues involved and the Church’s desire to shed light on the crisis confronting the modern family. [That's BS, Fr. Drew. What new complexities does AL describe that were not already present in FC? AL is lengthy because JMB and his ghosts decided they would dress up their key points written in Chapter 8 with a whole lot of orthodox froufrou reaffirming all that is universally accepted about the Church teaching to dissimulate the doctrinal and sacramental time bombs they sewed into the fabric of the document. And they did succeed in some way because even some of the harshest critics of AL were forced to acknowledge that outside of Chapter 8, much of it was comme il faut, some of it even said to be 'poetically written'.

But who cares about a seemingly lovely confection when it masks the poison it carries in Chapter 8? AL is knowingly and deliberately poisoned in what it implies about profaning the sacraments of matrimony, penance and the Eucharist, and about the nature of sin and the state of grace one needs to receive the Eucharist. Not to forget poisoned droplets outside Chapter 8, such as the whole bit about entrusting sex education of children to schools and other institutions, completely bypassing parental responsibility.]

But the issue which grabbed most attention was the possibility that Pope Francis might change the discipline on Communion for the divorced and remarried. The Pope had given strong hints from the first months of his pontificate that he wished to relax the traditional discipline, which regards marriages contracted by Catholics after divorce and without annulment of the first marriage as adulterous, constituting a bar to reception of the Eucharist.

The synod debates proved inconclusive. There was fierce opposition from many bishops to any relaxing of the discipline, which had been reaffirmed energetically by Pope St John Paul II. In the end, a compromise formula was found, which spoke of re-integrating these Catholics into the full life of the Church under the guidance of clergy but did not specify whether this included Communion. [The compromise was inexplicably and unforgivably cowardly on the part of the orthodox synodal fathers. By agreeing to omit in their final document the three lines in FC 84 in which St. John Paul II reaffirmed the communion ban, they effectively capitulated to Bergoglio, giving him the pretext not to refer to those lines at all and therefore, avoiding the appearance of directly contradicting John Paul II (and Benedict XVI who reiterated the Communion ban in Sacramentum caritatis). Has Edward Pentin or any other resourceful Vaticanista not tried to find the arriere-scene for that flagrant omission???]
All eyes were on Francis. Would he fling open the door which his favoured theologians had managed to prise ajar?

When the Pope’s document came, it seemed to steer clear of giving an unambiguous answer to the question which by now had eclipsed the wider issues treated at such length in AL. But two footnotes in the most controversial section, Chapter 8, seemed like a nudge and a wink to those determined to overthrow traditional doctrine in the name of pastoral openness. They stressed that subjective factors may diminish the guilt of objectively sinful situations and affirmed that in some cases the Church could offer those involved the help of the sacraments.

The ambiguity seemed deliberate – and indeed, the Pope had declared near the beginning of the document that the Church’s Magisterium could not be expected to settle every controverted question.

A debate developed along predictable lines. Conservative pastors and theologians maintained that the Pope was not changing Catholic doctrine. Others hailed a development of practice, setting aside the letter of the law in order to offer sinners the mercy which is, for Francis, the very essence of the Gospel.

The correspondence with the Argentine bishops seems to settle the argument decisively in favour of those who believe that AL liberalises the practice, if not the doctrine.

The bishops sent a draft document to the Pope for comment. It said that a process of discernment with pastors might recognise factors that limit the culpability of divorced and remarried spouses who found themselves incapable of sexual abstinence.

For such people, they wrote, “Amoris Laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist.” The Pope responded that “The document … completely explains the meaning of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.”

In a sequence of events we have become accustomed to under Pope Francis, the document was leaked, then after a few days confirmed as authentic by the Vatican. From now on, it seems clear that the Pope intends to legitimise a practice which is not only without official precedent, but was also ruled out by a predecessor he himself has canonised. St John Paul II’s 1981 post-synodal exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, unambiguously makes continence a pre-condition for the civilly remarried seeking access to the Eucharist.

The papal intervention presents a twofold difficulty for Catholics who take seriously the teaching authority of the Church, and of the Pope as the chief depository of that authority.

First, it is difficult not to see a contradiction between Francis’s view and the previous teaching, not just of one pope but of his predecessors as a whole.

This leads us to the second problem, which is even more serious because it goes beyond any one teaching and touches upon the nature and scope of papal authority in itself.

Much has been written about the difficulties of harmonising AL with previous teaching. The indissolubility of marriage is a dogma which Francis has no wish to set aside. But its practical consequences are the inadmissibility of subsequent unions while a first spouse still lives. The prohibition on receiving the Eucharist in a state of grave sin, and the necessity of a purpose of amendment for absolution, are equally firm articles of the Catholic faith. Does the Pope’s implicit relaxation of the discipline not set these aside?

Concern has been so deep and widespread that a group of Catholic academic theologians, along with some pastors of souls, many of them based in Britain, have gone so far as to write to the College of Cardinals.

Once more, a letter meant to be private has been made public, and this has created sufficient concern in the hierarchy to lead to some of the signatories of the letter being subjected to pressure from their superiors to distance themselves from its contents. The authors have been careful to point out that they are not saying that Pope Francis is a heretic, but are asking for an official clarification and a rectification of errors. [Fine, you don't have to go so far as to make a technical accusation of 'heresy'. All you have to say is that this pope has made, makes and will continue to make statements that cannot be harmonized with Catholic teaching before him, and are therefore simply wrong. Asking him to rectify his errors is saying he has made errors.]

Most Catholics will be puzzled, and possibly outraged, at the notion that a pope might be suspected of teaching error. [More simply, these are the Catholics who have been brought up to believe that 'the pope is always right' - even if in practice they apply this selectively. The popes - and the Church - cannot be right about contraception and abortion, so let's ignore them on this. But if this pope tells us we can receive communion as we please because we can discern ourselves that we are not really sinning and/or that we are in a special state of grace even without going to confession, then oh yes, indeed, the pope is soooo right!]

Pious repugnance at the very notion may lie behind the discreet episcopal attempts to silence the critics, which is otherwise hard to understand when the Pope himself has called for parrhesia, or courageous frankness, in discussing the issues.

Some knowledge of history and doctrine is necessary to enable us to look at the situation calmly. Catholics believe that the Pope is divinely preserved from error – that he is infallible – only in very specific circumstances. He must, whether presiding over a General Council or acting on his own authority, make it clear that he intends to deliver a teaching that will bind the conscience of the faithful and is irrevocable.

In modern times, only the teachings on the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption in 1950 have been proclaimed in this manner, and Francis has made it clear that he is not establishing binding norms – on the contrary, he has said that he wishes to provoke debate. [But his duty as pope is to unify the Church, not to deliberately provoke divisions. Not that he has ever manifested much of this unifying initiative, unless it is with non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians in general.]

The rest of the time the Pope, and the bishops in union with him, are exercising what we call the Ordinary Magisterium. It is divinely preserved from error only when it is constant and unanimous. John Paul II affirmed that the impossibility of women’s ordination, for example, is an example of this type of infallible teaching. [Constant it has been, but no longer unanimous! Watch this pope provoke new divisions over his apparent readiness to open the door to women priests by seemingly encouraging the notion of ordaining women deacons.]

Sometimes a teaching is not derived from unanimous tradition, but arises as a response to a contingent situation. Vatican II said that we must accord the teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium a “religious assent of mind and will”. This is not the same as the assent of faith, but is essentially loyal obedience to the Church’s authority.

So what happens if there appears to be a contradiction in the teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium? Essentially there are three possibilities.

The first is that Pope Francis is right and his predecessors were wrong. The difficulty is that he is one and they are many – and an oft-repeated teaching carries more authority than one issued by only one pope, and in a less solemn form.

The second is that Pope Francis is in error. It may happen that a pope errs in a non-infallible teaching, and he himself or his successor subsequently corrects it. In the 14th century, for example, John XXII taught a doctrine on the destiny of souls after death which he later recanted and which was judged heretical by his successor.

The third possibility is that the contradiction is only apparent and that there has been a development of doctrine which opens up new possibilities without repudiating what has been taught previously. This is the answer favoured by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, seemingly Pope Francis’s preferred spokesman on this issue.

The problem is that, according to the great exponent of the principle of development, our own Blessed John Henry Newman, development is only authentic if it preserves what has gone before and does not contradict it. Cardinal Schönborn has affirmed that this is the case for AL, but I am not convinced that he has demonstrated it with compelling argument. [What compelling argument can be presented to show that AL does not contradict Catholic teaching as we have known it till March 13, 2013?]

The First Vatican Council taught that “the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might … make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the Apostles.”

The controversy surrounding AL has made it clear that there is work to be done in showing how its teaching may be squared with that of previous popes [Nothing can be done to prove an impossibility! When the pope through AL empowers individual bishops, bishops' conferences, priests - and the very sinners themselves - to 'discern' whether or not they are worthy to receive Communion, without the assurances demanded of other sinners at confession ('to do penance and to amend my life'), that has surely never been taught by any pope before this one. And pace Cardinal Schoenborn, this Bergoglian twist is no 'development of doctrine' - it is a dismissal of specific doctrines to be replaced by new teaching that belongs to the church of Bergoglio, but certainly not to the Catholic Church].

Pope Francis often appears impatient with theological debate and even uninterested in setting out a coherent intellectual account of the orthodoxy which must undergird orthopraxis (correct conduct). The Church as a whole, however, cannot long do without such an account if her claims to teach authoritatively are to possess any real credibility.

The prerequisite for achieving that goal is an intellectually honest recognition of the difficulties in the current exercise of the papal Magisterium and an evenhanded recognition of the right to question and debate. [Canon 212 assures us of this right, and may the tribe increase in size and power of those who are committed to exercise this right actively day in and day out during a pontificate I would describe as amoeban - it takes on whatever shape the pope wants it to take at any moment. The Successor of Peter as an amoeba. Certainly no rock!]

TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 26 settembre 2016 23:05


As I don't normally check now what the Vatican media churns out daily - I did religiously every morning in the previous pontificate - I was not
aware of the following development that more Catholic media ought to have picked up- but so far, only by the UK's Catholic Herald,
which prompted me to look up the original report on Vatican Radio, a rather barebones account:

New Catholic-Orthodox agreement
on primacy and synodality

23/09/2016

Catholic and Orthodox theologians have reached agreement on a new joint document entitled "Synodality and Primacy During
the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church".


Cardinal Kurt Koch, as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, co-chaired the Chieti meeting. RV does not mention who was the Orthodox co-chair.

The announcement was made at the conclusion of a plenary session of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches which took place in the Italian town of Chieti from September 15th to 22nd.

Mgr Andrea Palmieri, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told Vatican Radio the new agreement is the result of a long process which began with the so-called Ravenna document, published in 2007 on the role of primacy in the early Church.

The new document looks closely at the relationship between the primacy exercised by the bishop of Rome and other Church leaders, he said, and can therefore point to ways of “resolving problems still existing between Catholics and Orthodox today”.

This document, Mgr Palmieri said, “opens the way” to a new phase of the dialogue but does not clearly resolve all the issues on the table. A note on the website of the Moscow Patriarchate, said consensus was reached, even though the Georgian Orthodox Church "disagreed with the individual paragraphs" of the document. The Georgian objections, it said, are contained in a note in the final communiqué adopted by the plenary session.

No agreement was reached in Chieti about the focus of the next plenary assembly which is due to be held in two years’ time in a predominantly Orthodox country.

Here's the CH commentary that places the agreement in the proper context, from Fr. Mark Drew, a parish priest in England who holds a doctorate in ecumenical theology from the Institut Catholique in Paris, and has also studied in Germany and Rome. He is a regular contributer to the CH:

The new Orthodox-Catholic agreement
is a landmark – but there’s a long way to go
by Fr Mark Drew

Monday, Sept. 26, 2016

Last Thursday, the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church announced that it had reached substantial agreement on the questions of primacy and synodality in the Church.

It was described as a “landmark agreement”, and one source asked excitedly whether Orthodox Churches might soon “recognise the Pope”. Has there really been a historic breakthrough in the process towards healing the thousand-year-old schism between East and West?

That the issue is a thorny one is shown by the recent history of the dialogue. In 2007 a meeting of the Commission at Ravenna produced a statement which recognised a historical right of the Bishop of Rome to be considered as protos, first in the order of bishops in the pre-schism Church, while leaving it to future discussions to see how this primacy might be exercised in a future, reunited Church.

The impact of the Ravenna document was somewhat reduced by the absence of the Moscow patriarchate, the largest Orthodox Church, because of an internal Orthodox dispute.

In 2014 the Commission met at Amman in Jordan, but failed to reach agreement on the theme of “Primacy and Synodality”. This year, with only of the small Church of Georgia expressing reservations, the group meeting in the Italian town of Chieti has managed to achieve a consensus on the issue.

The document, bearing the full title “Synodality and Primacy during the first Millennium: Towards a common understanding in service to the Unity of the Church”, was released as early as Friday. A perusal of it shows that, while it is of undoubted significance as a stage in the dialogue, it is too early to be ringing the church bells to celebrate reunion as if it were just around the corner.

The basic reason why such jubilation would be premature is because the document confines itself to outlining a common reading of the past, rather than going into the possible shape which authority might take, and who would exercise it, in the future unity we all long for.

To quote part of its conclusion, a reading of the history of the first Millenium shows a common theological, liturgical and canonical heritage, on the basis of which Catholics and Orthodox “must consider how primacy, synodality, and the interrelatedness between them can be conceived and exercised today and in the future.”

The fact that the document offers only an analysis of the way things were in the past does not, however, mean that we should minimise its importance. After all, our present divisions are rooted in a long and painful history of gradual estrangement and mutual opposition, in the course of which each side developed a polemical version of history, read in a way designed to bolster its own claims and thus irreceivable for the other.

It should be said at once that the document has accepted a reading of the first Millennium which is more in tune with the way Orthodoxy has tended to see it than that favoured by Catholic apologetics until recent times.

Until such confessional readings of history became unfashionable after Vatican II, Catholics would commonly urge Orthodox to return to the unity of the first centuries from which they were alleged to have gone into schism by rejecting the Roman Primacy which they previously accepted. In line with this view, every sign from the early Church of the East accepting a leading role for the bishop of Rome was interpreted as recognising for him the kind of role he came to play in the post-schism West.

The Chieti document unambiguously rejects this simplification of history. It recognises that even in the West the understanding of Roman primacy was the result of a development of doctrine, particularly from the fourth century, and that this development did not occur in the East: “The primacy of the bishop of Rome among the bishops was gradually interpreted as a prerogative that was his because he was successor of Peter, the first of the apostles. This understanding was not adopted in the East…” The East, in other words, rather than reneging on a common heritage, simply never accepted a development it had not been part of.

On the role of the popes in the early Ecumenical Councils, recognised by both East and West to this day, the document notes that the bishops of Rome were not present at any of them, but were either represented by legates or agreed afterwards to the conclusions. This section concludes with a statement which is music to Orthodox ears [???]: “Reception by the Church as a whole has always been the ultimate criterion for the ecumenicity of a council.” [How does the non-presence of the pope - who was duly represented and/or agreed to the councils' conclusions -at the early ecumenical councils recognized by both East and West not constitute 'reception by the Church as a whole'?]

On the significance of appeal to Rome, which Eastern bishops in the early centuries sometimes exercised when local synods ruled against them, and which Western apologists have stressed as proof of papal authority in the early Church, the document is unambiguous: “Appeals to the bishop of Rome from the East expressed the communion of the Church, but the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East.”

Have the Catholic members of the Joint Commission gone native? Has the desire to win over the Orthodox, traditionally so suspicious of Catholic motives whenever unity is discussed, led them to concede too much? The reality is otherwise.

Recent scholarship, led by Catholic scholars who have freed themselves from the shackles of a one-sided apologetic no longer in favour with the Magisterium itself, have concluded that papal authority in the form it has taken in the Second Millennium West, can only be properly understood as a doctrinal development in which the East had no part.

Moreover, the intuition that the authority of the pope as universal primate is only properly understood in conjunction with the authority of the episcopacy as a whole, expressed as “synodality” or “conciliarity”, is one that has been embraced enthusiastically by Catholic theology since Vatican II.

So what is the way forward? St John Paul II invited Catholics and other Christians to reflect together on how the bishop of Rome might exercise a form of servant leadership in a future, reunited Church. Joseph Ratzinger, as a theologian and then (more tentatively) as pope, opined that more could not be asked of the East than was granted in the First Millennium.

The Chieti document, if it is ratified by the Holy See, becomes the official Catholic position. As such it is of real significance. Those on the Catholic side who perpetuate the myth of an Orthodox Church subject to Rome, but which one-sidedly “broke off”, will find it uncomfortable reading. It becomes ever clearer that in the wake of Vatican II there can be no “Ecumenism of return” addressed to the East.

Will there be an equal recognition from our Orthodox partners in dialogue that talk of Rome “abandoning her errors and returning to Orthodoxy” is but a mirror image of the same polemical distortion of history? Will both sides be able to agree on the necessary grounds for unity, and the limits it must put to diversity? These are the questions on which hopes for future progress towards the unity which Christ prayed for will depend.

I think I can guess why the Vatican media have grossly underplayed the Chieti agreement - because the current pope really does not believe any of these theological discussions are necessary, as he dismissed them in his airplane news conference on his return from a fraternal visit with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul in November 2014:
I believe that with Orthodoxy we are on our way. They have the sacraments, the apostolic succession… we are going along.

What do we have to wait for? For the theologians to agree? That day will never come, I assure you, I am skeptical. Theologians work well, but I remember what was said in connection to what Athenagoras had said to Paul VI: 'Let us advance alone; and let us put all the theologians on an island, to reflect!'...

One cannot wait: unity is a road, a way to follow, to follow together. And that is the spiritual ecumenism: to pray together, to work together, there are many works of charity, there is much work to be done… To teach together… To go ahead together. It is spiritual ecumenism (…)
- Pope Francis, November 30, 2014

Thus spake Bergoglio, in November 2014! You think he has changed his mind? He himself has repeatedly said, "I am too old to change what I think!"
TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 27 settembre 2016 00:45


Catholics in an age of secular moralism
How do Catholics avoid reducing the faith
to the pursuit of fundamentally secularist causes?
[Hard for 'the-pope-is-always-right' Catholics to do when
their nominal leader is obsessively pushing his fundamentally secular agenda!]
by Samuel Gregg

Sept. 26, 2016

From the Church’s earliest beginnings, Christians have sought to make this world a better place. Whether through thinking about how to order the political realm more justly or by serving the poor in conditions of indescribable filth, great saints ranging from Augustine to Teresa of Calcutta exemplify this living-out of the Gospel message. [A Bergogliophile would have added '...to Pope Francis today' to extend the line to the present! But as carefully generic as Dr. Gregg couches his analysis, many of his negative specifics do refer to the current pope's actions and statements.]

Like everything else in the Church’s life, however, such activities can become distorted as a result of being detached from the truth of Catholic faith.

Indeed, since the mid-twentieth century, many Catholics have effectively reduced the faith to the pursuit of various political, economic and social agendas — so much so that such activism becomes seen as the essence of being Catholic. This essentially amounts to the faith’s absorption into what I’ll call secular moralism.

The term “moralism” is used a great deal today. It’s often employed to stigmatize moral arguments associated with orthodox Christianity or what are often conventionally labelled “conservative” positions. There are, however, legitimate uses of the word within a Christian context.

One is the idea that moral improvement is the way to win God’s favor, or what might be called a type of pious Pelagianism. Another is a deep preoccupation with oneself and others being obedient to moral precepts — an approach that goes hand-in-hand with a heavily duty-based and legalistic mindset.

This type of moralism often degenerates into trying to find loopholes which allow people to rationalize free choices to violate, for instance, the moral absolutes underscored by the Decalogue, Christ, Saint Paul, and the entire Christian tradition. [Of which AL - specifically its Chapter 8 - is Prime Exhibit No. 1.]

Moralism, however, isn’t limited to the Christian realm. It has many secular counterparts. Prominent among these is morality’s reduction to my voracious support for particular causes.

“I am a good person because I favor environmentalism, socialism, liberalism, unions, business, el pueblo, refugees, feminism, the United Nations, pacifism, an end to air-conditioning, nuclear disarmament, etc.” [Which is the exact mindset of JMB and all his fellow progressivists.]

In this world, other peoples’ badness is determined by the fact that they don’t identify with, or have significant reservations about, for example, the contemporary environmental movement, the European Union, or some of the absurd claims made today under the rubric of human rights. Such individuals are relegated to the outer realms of acceptability and assigned a label. This usually involves words like “hater” or the suffix “phobic.”

It’s not that Catholics can be indifferent to something like the plight of refugees. In fact, we should be concerned about such things. But while the Church has always insisted that we may never freely choose to violate the moral absolutes, it recognizes that Catholics can often legitimately propose different solutions to a challenge like immigration.

Secular moralism, by contrast, generally involves denying that there is a prudential dimension to how we choose to do good. With secular moralists, it’s normally their way and no other way. [So what does it say of our current pope that he is the current standard bearer for just such secular moralism?]

If you want to test the theory, try telling one of secular moralism’s high priests (Jeffrey Sachs comes to mind) why you think, say, government-mandated carbon-emissions reductions might not be the best approach to addressing climate change. Then observe how quickly you are stigmatized as bent on destroying the planet or a tool of Big Oil. [You'd get the very same reaction if you said that to JMB, Cardinal Parolin or Cardinal Turkson - or Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo!]

Within the Church, secular moralism rears its head when the faith becomes exclusively identified with improvements of this world. [But that's what is happening under this pope. Not for him Jesus's admonition to "Seek first the Kingdom of God, all these things will be added to you!" No, for him, it's "Let us first find you a country to live in, a home to stay in, food to eat, clothes for your family, and a job that will give you free education and healthcare. Don't worry, Christ has nothing to with any of this, especially if you don't believe in him!"]

And that really matters because it means that the person of Christ and the most essential messages of his Gospel are being marginalized, if not lost altogether.

Again, it’s not that attempting to realize any number of goals in the realms of politics, the economy, or civil society is necessarily wrong in itself. Even popes have lent the Church’s support to particular causes.

One example is Leo XIII’s effort to alleviate the condition of employees in early-industrial capitalism. No one, however, would suggest that Leo XIII diminished the Gospel to promoting the well-being of industrial workers. He spoke ceaselessly, and far more often, of the Christ who lived, suffered, died, and who was restored to life: the Christ who is, as Saint John Paul II wrote in his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis, “the source of a new life that does not pass away but lasts to eternal life.”

In short, while addressing contemporary problems is one aspect of the Church’s mission, spreading the message of Christ’s invitation to eternal life necessarily comes first and foremost for any orthodox Christian. Without this, we become mere secular moralists.

As Joseph Ratzinger pointed out in a homily delivered one month before his election as pope, Christ’s opponents put him to death not for his good works, but because he claimed to be God.

“Jesus's adversaries,” the future pope said, “cannot deny the good works they have seen, but what they can deny is that these good works point to something more, to something beyond the works themselves.”

One sees the same thing today with those who praise Christians’ service to the poor but then object strenuously when those same Christians speak of Christ, his message of redemption and eternal life, and what this means for our free choices.

By definition, reducing the Gospel to promoting temporal causes involves being ambiguous about, ignoring, or subtly denying Christ’s call to eternal life.

In his 1975 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (much praised by Pope Francis) [Typical Bergoglian lip service, to occasionally flash his Catholic bona fides when he thinks it's opportune - 'I'm a loyal son of the Church' and all that!]

Blessed Paul VI noted that Christians “are frequently tempted to reduce [the Church’s] mission to the dimensions of a simply temporal project . . . a man-centered goal: the salvation of which she is the messenger would be reduced to material well-being. Her activity, forgetful of all spiritual and religious preoccupation, would become initiatives of the political or social order.”[But that is exactly what JMB, who professes to praise Evangelii nuntiandi, has been doing, which is a betrayal of the primary mission of the Church by the very man who is supposed to be leading her!]

Given the context, the Pope Paul VI's words were clearly a warning to proponents of Marxist-versions of liberation theology, most of whom were — and remain — rather quiet about man’s final destiny beyond death: i.e., oneness with Christ, or the eternal separation from God that we can freely choose for ourselves (also known as Hell).

But Pope Paul’s critique goes beyond that group. It’s also a reminder to Christians of what happens when you read the Scriptures as a message of an essentially this-worldly liberation: something that involves reinterpreting the Resurrection as “symbolic” rather than a real historical event which opened the possibility of immortality with Christ.

In other words, “immanentizing the eschaton,” to rework the phrase coined by the German philosopher Eric Voegelin, leads inevitably to Christianity collapsing into secular moralism.

So how do Christians avoid reducing the Gospel to secular moralism while also fulfilling our Gospel-mandated responsibilities to our neighbor in need?

Part of the answer, we already know. Catholics must take the Scriptures’ presentation of Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection seriously — as the Apostles telling us what really happened — and not sideline their significance for the Christian life because we’re worried that environmentalists, UN officials, or German bishops conference bureaucrats might not take us seriously.

The other part of the answer involves correctly understanding the relationship of our free choices and actions (or “works”, as the Apostle James calls them) to the world which is to come.

Perhaps the best contemporary Catholic statement on this relationship is to be found, ironically enough, in the very document most claimed by those inclined to reduce Catholicism to just another secular moralism and Christ to just another noble sage.

At the end of the third chapter of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, the Council Fathers wrote:
While earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God. [??? 'Earthly progress is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God?' ????

For after we have obeyed the Lord, and in His Spirit nurtured on earth the values of human dignity, brotherhood and freedom [humanae dignitatis, communionis fraternae et libertatis], and indeed all the good fruits of our nature and enterprise [industriae], we will find them again, but freed of stain, burnished and transfigured, when Christ hands over to the Father: “a kingdom eternal and universal, a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace.”

On this earth that Kingdom is already present in mystery. When the Lord returns it will be brought into full flower. (GS 39)
[Why did G&S not simply repeat Matthew 6:33, than which there can be no better formulation of what Christian priorities must be: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you".]

There is much worth pondering in those sentences. But perhaps the most important points are these.

First, there are no earthly utopias. Today’s utopian is usually tomorrow’s commissar.

Second, eternity does begin in the here-and-now of our daily, often humdrum lives. Our good works, whether those of a senator or a janitor, create fruit — humanae dignitatis, communionis fraternae et libertatis — that lasts. These are the goods which ultimately matter.

At the end of time, long after the rock concert for universal peace and cosmic justice is over, the goods which we have realized through our free choices will be revealed as, Saint Paul reminds us, through fire. What was built on the foundation of Christ, he says, will endure (1 Cor 3:14).

Next to Christ’s offer of eternal life with him, the Church’s doctrine of immortality, and what these say about just how much God loves man, the emotivist satisfactions afforded by secular moralism seem like very poor fare indeed.
Go tell that to the man who now happens to be pope, whose guiding theology appears to be nothing but the rank sentimentalism of 'good intentions', and we know where they often lead to.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 27 settembre 2016 01:27
I have not posted any item from Fr. Hunwicke lately - in addition to brief items on this and that (the feast of St. Januarius, Assisi 2016, the feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, patroness of the first Anglican Ordinariate to which Fr H belongs, a couple more criticisms of the Anglican Church and the Catholic 'formators' assigned to mentor the Anglican clergy who were joining the first Ordinariate), he had a five-part series on the Anglican Ordinariate and how to use the argumentum ad hominem effectively to neutralize particularly nasty and partisan opponents - a very good series, BTW, which one of these days I will post. But in the past two days, he had two items of more general interest...

A tale of two churches -
and what have they been teaching seminarians?

Sept. 25, 2016

While doing the North, we found ourselves looking over a perfect 'transitional' Augustinian Priory Church, which, as Pevsner observes, was in ruins but still complete enough in the 1840s to make its restoration at that time almost totally reliable.

It is beside a ruined Regency house: if only the Priory were still in ruins; and the Regency house were not in tatters; the whole (immensely romantic) site would be a perfect setting for Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

I will call it Effchurch Priory; we visited it at noon on the Saturday when forty or fifty people were gathered there for a Tridentine High Mass. It happens, I gather, once a year. An elegant and very accessible sermon on the day's Saint (St Nicolas of Tolentino); perfect liturgy; excellent singing. An enthusiastic and very participatory congregation, who knew their way around the Church's immemorial Liturgy and took part in a natural, relaxed, unforced, often quite loud, way.

Sadly, I did not feel that having heard Mass on Saturday at 12:00 would fulfill the Sunday obligation; so in the evening we went to a Vigil Mass in a town some miles away, which I will rename Offchester. The difference was palpable.

The 1969 rite done very badly. Very little participation; the organ droned out eight stanzas of a hymn tune and not a person made a sound. The parish priest obviously deemed himself a brilliant mystagogue, because every single 'presidential formula', even the pseudo-Hippolytan Eucharistic Prayer, was either changed or interpolated.

There was, unsurprisingly, no sermon. I say "unsurprisingly" because I have met the same liturgical corruption in the South of England, not least in a church where the priest proudly referred to it as "a Vatican II church".

[Fr Z has commentary, in red, on the rest of the item:]

I wonder why some priests of a certain generation and a ‘Conciliar’ culture have such a rooted aversion to preaching. This leads me on to wonder what exactly it was that they were taught in the corrupted and emptying seminaries of the post-Conciliar decades.

We know that (despite Canon 249 and the Veterum Sapientia of St John XXIII) they were not taught Latin or Greek; because of this, they were blocked from sudying Patristics. [They were kept in the fog…. on purpose!]

They did not … clearly … do Liturgy or Liturgical Theology or Practical Liturgy; it appears that they received no education in Scripture, Biblical Theology, or how to open the Word of God for their people.

I somehow doubt that they were all given a deep formation in traditional moral theology or the hearing of confessions, because I know of (another) church in the South of England where the priest explained that the difficulty about hearing confessions was that the Confessional had for many years been used for stacking away the unsold debris of Parish bazaars.

What, in the Name of God Almighty and God most Adorable, did all those men learn in those seven expensive years of ‘priestly formation’? [It was a horror show, let me tell you.]

I know some traddies cheerfully but (IMHO) irresponsibly point out that Monsignor Time will solve the problem of that generation of clergy; [What I have called the “Biological Solution”.] but, in a decade or two’s time, will the joyless and infantilised congregations still be in existence? These are souls for whom Christ died. [“But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” Maybe in small communities. “Base” communities?]

If I were a bishop, I would send round formidable, even terrifying, hit squads of bright, orthodox, and cheerful young clergy with the oil of ordination still damp upon their hands, to teach the dear old gentlemen all the things that their lecturers forgot to mention in the 1970s and 1980s; and to overhaul a radicibus [from the roots] the parish liturgies. [I once thought that we needed a new religious order called The Rubricians. They would go two by two into the world to battle liturgical abuses and teach the erring the error of their ways.]

Cardinal Sarah’s recent extremely sound suggestions could provide a lively and exciting start to a programme of restoring catholic authenticity in the desert areas. And His Eminence, with his true and accurate pastoral heart, clearly understands the urgency of this need. Happily, one hears of diocesan bishops loyally responding to his timely initiative. Let us hope that, on Advent Sunday …

But not, sadly, quite all bishops. One or two Ordinarii locorum prefer to resemble stewards careering crazily around on the Great Liner’s dangerously sloping decks while shouting noisily and inaccurately at anyone they meet about the ‘true post-Conciliar’ alignment of deckchairs.


Once again, questioning
the limits of papal authority

Sept.26, 2016

(1) The latest Catholic Herald has a good piece by a Fr Mark Drew on the ongoing Amoris laetitia crisis. (I cannot resist entering here a snide comment that visitors to this blog have already repeately read most of his points here ... Parrhesia and all.) Father refers to the intimidation [against AL critics and dissenters] experienced in this country as 'discreet' ... but then, we are English, aren't we? In some other places, it has been anything but discreet.

(2) Sandro Magister (Chiesa 21 September) quotes an Andrew Grillo, whom he calls a keen Bergoglian, as forecasting that the next Synod will, among other things, deal with "The Collegial exercise of the episcopacy and the restitution to the Bishop of full authority over the diocesan liturgy".

I presume we all know by now that 'Collegiality' is well established as a code-word for giving improper competences to Episcopal Conferences - a serious potential ecclesiological corruption (upon which Cardinal Mueller spoke well a year or two ago).

But what I am particularly drawing your attention to this morning is the part of the sentence I have put into italics. It means that the bully-boys who hate Ratzinger and his legacy are beginning to set their sights on demolishing Summorum Pontificum and eliminating its admirable doctrinal emphases on Subsidiarity and the auctoritas of Tradition.[

I am only surprised that it has taken the Wolves and their cubs so long to get round to this.

Both of these two superficially diverse items exemplify the same over-arching problem which this increasingly dysfunctional pontificate continually throws up: the limits of lawful papal power. Time to read again what Ratzinger so wisely said on this. And to revisit Pastor aeternus (together with Denzinger 3114 and 3117).

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 27 settembre 2016 03:39
Two recent scientific news reports pertinent to Catholic belief...

Evolution just got harder to defend
by Eric Metaxas

September 14, 2016 | 10:59 AM EDT

A new fossil discovery makes it even tougher for Darwinists to explain the origin of life.

There’s an old story about a chemist, a physicist, and an economist stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but a can of soup. Puzzling over how to open the can, the chemist says, “Let’s heat the can until it swells and bursts from the buildup of gases.” “No, no,” says the physicist, “let’s throw it off that cliff with just enough kinetic energy to split it open on the rocks below.” The economist, after thinking a moment says, “Assume a can opener.”

The way Darwinists approach the origin of life is a lot like that economist’s idea for opening the can. The Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection explains everything about life, we’re told — except how it began. “Assume a self-replicating cell containing information in the form of genetic code,” Darwinists are forced to say. Well, fine. But where did that little miracle come from?

A new discovery makes explaining even that first cell tougher still. Fossils unearthed by Australian scientists in Greenland may be the oldest traces of life ever discovered. A team from the University of Wollongong recently published their findings in the journal Nature, describing a series of structures called “stromatolites” that emerged from receding ice.

“Stromatolites” may sound like something your doctor would diagnose, but they’re actually biological rocks formed by colonies of microbes that live in shallow water. If you visit the Bahamas today, you can see living stromatolites.

What’s so special about them? Well, they appear in rocks most scientists date to 220 million years older than the oldest fossils, which pushes the supposed date for the origin of life back to 3.7 billion years ago.

This, admits the New York Times, “complicates the story of evolution of early life from chemicals ... .” No kidding!

According to conventional geology, these microbe colonies existed on the heels of a period when Earth was undergoing heavy asteroid bombardment, making it virtually uninhabitable. This early date, adds The Times, “leaves comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred … .”

That is an understatement. These life forms came into existence virtually overnight, writes David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views - “genetic code, proteins, photosynthesis, the works.”

This appearance of fully-developed life forms so early in the fossil record led Dr. Abigail Allwood of Caltech to remark that “life [must not be] a fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing.” Rather, “it will emerge whenever there’s an opportunity.”

Pardon me? If life occurs so spontaneously and predictably even under the harshest conditions, then it should be popping up all over the place! Yet scientists still cannot come close to producing even a single cell from raw chemicals in the lab.

Dr. Stephen Meyer explains in his book Signature in the Cell why this may be Darwinism’s Achilles heel. In order to begin evolution by natural selection, you need a self-replicating unit. But the cell and its DNA blueprint are too complicated by far to have arisen through chance chemical reactions. The odds of even a single protein forming by accident are astronomical.

So Meyer and other Intelligent Design theorists conclude that Someone must have designed and created the structures necessary for life.

Meanwhile Darwinists, faced with a fossil record that theoretically pushes the origin of life back further into the past, are forced to assume the metaphorical can opener. They just don’t know how these early cells came into existence, and the more we dig up, the more improbable — rather than likely — life becomes.

For them at least.

The following item is more 'technical' and we could all celebrate this indicator of successful therapy except that the stem cells used were embryonic, not adult, and one does not learn this until almost the very end of the article... Anyway, let us pray that parallel research with adult stem cells could also result in something similar.

First-ever quadriplegic treated with stem cells
regains motor control in his upper body

Sept. 23, 2016

For the first time ever, neuroscientists have treated a total quadriplegic with stem cells, and he has substantially recovered the functions of his upper body only two months into the process.

The Keck Medical Center of USC announced that a team of doctors became the first in California to inject an experimental treatment made from stem cells, AST-OPC1, into the damaged cervical spine of a recently paralyzed 21-year-old man as part of a multi-center clinical trial.

On March 6, just shy of his 21st birthday, Kristopher (Kris) Boesen of Bakersfield suffered a traumatic injury to his cervical spine when his car fishtailed on a wet road, hit a tree, and slammed into a telephone pole.

Parents Rodney and Annette Boesen were warned there was a good chance their son would be permanently paralyzed from the neck down. However, they also learned that Kris could possibly qualify for a clinical study that might help.

Leading the surgical team and working in collaboration with Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center and Keck Medicine of USC, Charles Liu, MD, PhD, director of the USC Neurorestoration Center, injected an experimental dose of 10 million AST-OPC1 cells directly into Kris’s cervical spinal cord in early April.

“Typically, spinal cord injury patients undergo surgery that stabilizes the spine but generally does very little to restore motor or sensory function,” explains Liu. “With this study, we are testing a procedure that may improve neurological function, which could mean the difference between being permanently paralyzed and being able to use one’s arms and hands. Restoring that level of function could significantly improve the daily lives of patients with severe spinal injuries.”

Two weeks after surgery, Kris began to show signs of improvement. Three months later, he’s able to feed himself, use his cell phone, write his name, operate a motorized wheelchair and hug his friends and family. Improved sensation and movement in both arms and hands also makes it easier for Kris to care for himself, and to envision a life lived more independently.



“As of 90 days post-treatment, Kris has gained significant improvement in his motor function, up to two spinal cord levels,” said Dr. Liu. “In Kris’s case, two spinal cord levels means the difference between using your hands to brush your teeth, operate a computer or do other things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, so having this level of functional independence cannot be overstated.”

Doctors are careful not to predict Kris's future progress.

“All I’ve wanted from the beginning was a fighting chance,” said Kris, who has a passion for fixing up and driving sports cars and was studying to become a life insurance broker at the time of the accident. “But if there’s a chance for me to walk again, then heck yeah! I want to do anything possible to do that.”

Because the window for performing the surgery was tight, everything needed to go according to schedule in order for Kris to qualify.

Once Kris made the decision to pursue enrollment in the study, dozens of doctors, nurses, rehabilitation specialists and others sprang into action. Because he would need to provide voice confirmation of his desire to participate in the study, Kris had to be able to breathe without a ventilator. Weaning a patient from assisted breathing generally is a three-week process. He did it in five days with the help of a respiratory care team. He signed the paperwork and began a week of assessments, scans and other pre-surgery tests.

In early April, a surgical team from Keck Hospital of USC carefully injected 10 million AST-OPC1 cells directly into Kris’s cervical spine. Nearly six weeks later, Kris was discharged and returned to Bakersfield to continue his rehabilitation. Doctors reviewed his progress at seven days, 30 days, 60 days and 90 days post-injection, and Kris can look forward to detailed assessments after 180 days, 270 days and one year.

Rodney and Annette Boesen say they are amazed at the level of collaboration and cooperation that enabled their son to participate in the study. “So many things had to happen, and there were so many things that could have put up a roadblock,” marvels Rodney. “The people at Keck Medical Center of USC and elsewhere moved heaven and earth to get things done. There was never a moment through all of this when we didn’t think our son was getting world class care.”

The pioneering surgery is the latest example of how the emerging fields of neurorestoration and regenerative medicine may have the potential to improve the lives of thousands of patients who have suffered a severe spinal cord injury.

The stem cell procedure Kris received is part of a Phase 1/2a clinical trial that is evaluating the safety and efficacy of escalating doses of AST-OPC1 cells developed by Fremont, California-based Asterias Biotherapeutics.

AST-OPC1 cells are made from embryonic stem cells by carefully converting them into oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs), which are cells found in the brain and spinal cord that support the healthy functioning of nerve cells. In previous laboratory studies, AST-OPC1 was shown to produce neurotrophic factors, stimulate vascularization and induce remyelination of denuded axons.

All are critical factors in the survival, regrowth and conduction of nerve impulses through axons at the injury site, according to Edward D. Wirth III, MD, PhD, chief medical director of Asterias and lead investigator of the study, dubbed “SCiStar.”

“At the 10 million cell level, we’re now in a dose range that is the human equivalent of where we were when we saw efficacy in pre-clinical studies,” says Wirth. “While we continue to evaluate safety first and foremost, we are also now looking at how well treatment might help restore movement in these patients.”

To qualify for the clinical trial, enrollees must be between the age of 18 and 69, and their condition must be stable enough to receive an injection of AST-OPC1 between the fourteenth and thirtieth days following injury.

Keck is one of six sites in the U.S. authorized to enroll subjects and administer the clinical trial dosage.

And a third scientific news report about water in some other place of our solar system - which could mean a possibility of some life form (living organisms based on carbon, hydrogen and oxygen as are life forms on earth)....

Hubble telescope finds more evidence
of water plumes from Jupiter's moon
By K. N. Smith

September 26, 2016

Hubble hasn’t found aliens on Europa, Jupiter's moon, but it may have found new evidence that plumes of salt water from the moon’s globe-spanning salty ocean can escape through cracks in its icy shell.

Using its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument, Hubble captured far-ultraviolet images of what could be geysers of water from beneath the surface, erupting in Europa’s southern hemisphere.

If the features in those images are really geysers, that could be very good news for future missions to Europa, providing an easier source of samples from Europa’s subsurface ocean and making it easier to search for signs of life beneath the ice.

Space Science Telescope Institute astronomer William Sparks and his colleagues borrowed a method from exoplanet research and applied it to a potentially habitable world much closer to home (in relative space terms, anyway - Europa is about 390 million miles away).

When an exoplanet passes in front of its star, astronomers can look at the very edge of the visible part of the planet, called the limb, to see what wavelengths of light from the star get absorbed by the thin band of the exoplanet’s atmosphere. Because different chemicals absorb light at different wavelengths, that can yield clues about what alien atmospheres are made of.

In early 2014, Hubble looked for features along Europa’s limb that might absorb the sunlight reflected by Jupiter. Hydrogen and oxygen both absorb light in the ultraviolet wavelengths, so Sparks and his colleagues looked at Europa in the far ultraviolet. Hubble sent home ten images of Europa’s silhouetted surface, and features that might be geysers appeared in three of them.

“Anything that absorbs [light] will appear in our image. We presume it to be water vapor or ice particles because that’s what Europa’s made of and those molecules do absorb at the wavelengths we observed at, which is why we chose those wavelengths,” said Sparks during a press conference earlier today.


Hubble's view of huge plumes of water vapor in 2013, shown superimposed on a photo of Europa; artict's concept of a cross-section of Europa's crust and inner ocean. At its heart, this Jovian moon has an extensive ocean and possible undersea volcanoes.

This is the second piece of evidence for geysers on Europa, following a 2012 Hubble observation of hydrogen and oxygen in potential plumes coming from the same areas of the planet’s southern latitudes. Because Europa is tidally locked with massive Jupiter, it always shows the same face to Earth, much like our own Moon.

The Galileo mission, launched in 1989 and which arrived at Jupiter in 1995, did a single scan for plumes erupting from Europa, but came up empty. If the plumes are really there, says Sparks, they won’t exactly be the Europan version of Old Faithful; they’re most likely intermittent.

“It’s significant because previously there’s just been one piece of evidence that these things exist. Now we’ve got a couple more pieces of evidence that they exist,” said Sparks.

The plumes could become targets for a planned Europa flyby mission, tentatively slated for launch in the 2020s, which will carry a spectroscopic instruments from infrared to far ultraviolet, as well as instruments to measure the composition of samples – such as material from watery plumes. Thermal imaging will also allow the Europa flyby spacecraft to look for hotspots (or at least relatively warm spots) in the ice where plumes might erupt.

It’s possible that the mission could fly a pass, or several, through Europa’s plumes, much as the Cassini spacecraft flew through the jets of water erupting from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Mission planners are still planning potential trajectories, and they’re interested in narrowing down which of the possible plumes might be the best target.

It’s unlikely that we’ll find life in those plumes, but the flyby mission could look for signs of organic chemistry that might provide a strong clue.

“Even if there is a small amount of biomass in the plumes as they start out from the ocean, by the time they get into space and the radiation environment of Europa at cryogenic temperatures, it’s not going to survive,” said Sparks. “We’d have to be looking for the remains of something that was once protected in the ice or under the ice.”

Of course, the Europa flyby mission, if it gets off the ground, won’t be a true search for life. The flyby will focus on determining whether Europa is habitable in the first place, in part because that’s the part scientists currently know how to do. Scientists have a well-established set of criteria for deciding whether a place is habitable, but they’re still debating what to look for to prove that life exists, or doesn’t exist, on another world.

As for whether there’s life in the plumes, “I would say the jury is out,” said senior Hubble project scientist Jennifer Weissman. “It really depends first on whether these plumes are actually there.”

And that’s still waiting to be confirmed. Sparks and his team were careful to point out that these observations aren’t definitive proof that the geysers are real, although they are compelling when combined with the 2012 evidence from Hubble.

The far-ultraviolet wavelengths are right at the limits of Hubble’s capability. The researchers say it’s likely that the features that showed up in three of the ten images are probably real, rather than some unexpected effect from the instruments, though they can’t completely rule that out. Repeated Hubble observations would help confirm that the STIS instrument is operating properly in the far ultraviolet, which would improve confidence in the observations.

“The other thing that would really, that could potentially nail it would be if somebody came in with a completely independent observing technique and the results were consistent,” said Sparks. Some teams are starting to look for other means of detecting plumes, but that’s probably a ways off.

In the meantime, Hubble observations may offer the best way to keep an eye on Europa and its potential geysers.

“When we cannot fly a mission up close, the next best thing is to use the Hubble Space Telescope and some of its unique capabilities to study Europa from afar,” said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Scientists hypothesize that below Europa's icy exterior, there's about 3 billion cubic kilometers of water sloshing around in a subsurface ocean. That's more water than we have here on Earth. And because life on Earth requires water, the Jovian moon is one of the top spots in our solar system where scientists would like to search for alien life.

But Europa's ocean is thought to be buried under about 62 miles of solid ice. Which is why it was so exciting, in 2013, when Hubble spied water vapor above Europa. This water vapor may be erupting in plumes from Europa's surface, and if those plumes are shooting up from the inner ocean, a spacecraft could potentially sample the ocean simply by swooping through the plumes--no drilling rig required.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 27 settembre 2016 03:51
September 26, 2016 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com
TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 28 settembre 2016 03:25


Great news! Many prominent Catholics who have signed other appeals and protests to this pope on matters regarding family and marriage have now started an initiative that stresses the positive in Church teaching ante Bergoglio...

Firm fidelity to an immutable Magisterium
80 prominent Catholics reaffirm Church teaching on the family and morality
by Marco Tosatti
Translated from

September 27, 2016

A Declaration of Fidelity to the immutable teaching of the Church on matrimony and its uninterrupted discipline was published today by a group of 80 Catholics, including cardinals, bishops, priests, eminent scholars, leaders of family organizations and prominent representatives of civilian society.

The Declaration was published through the Italian association Supplica Filiale (Filial Appeal) which had gathered almost a million signatures online (including 91 prelates) in between the two 'family synods' asking Pope Francis for a word of clarification that would dissipate the confusion disseminated in the Church by Cardinal Kasper's keynote address to the secret consistory of February 2014 on fundamental questions of natural and Christian morality.

Noting that such confusion has only grown among the faithful after the two synodal assemblies on the family and the publication of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia (and its more or less official interpretations), the signatories of the Declaration say they feel the urgent moral duty to reiterate the bimillenary teaching of Catholic doctrine on matrimony, the family, and the moral discipline practised for centuries with respect to these basic institutions of Christian civilization.

Such a grave duty, the signatories say, becomes even more urgent in view of the growing attacks by secularist forces against marriage and the family - attacks which no longer seem to have the barriers once presented by Catholic practice, at least as this is now generally presented to the public.

Solidly supported by a crystalline and unequivocal teaching, and until recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Magisterium of the Church, the Declaration is articulated in 27 affirmations of truth that are explicitly or implicitly negated or made ambiguous in the language of various ecclesial documents of a pastoral nature.

These have to do, the signatories say, with unmodifiable doctrines and practices regarding faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the respect owed to the Eucharist, the impossibility of partaking of the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin, the conditions of repentance in order to receive sacramental absolution, the
universal observance of the Sixth Commandment, the most serious duty not to give public scandal and not to lead the People of God to sin, or to relativize good and bad, the objective limits of conscience, etc.


The preamble to the Declaration is as follows:







The full Declaration is available in English and Italian on the site http://www.filialappeal.org/full
where it will shortly be available in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese on http://www.filialappeal.org/
Those who wish to sign the declaration may do so on the same site.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 28 settembre 2016 04:08
Sept. 27, 2016 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com
Questa è la versione 'lo-fi' del Forum Per visualizzare la versione completa clicca qui
Tutti gli orari sono GMT+01:00. Adesso sono le 20:14.
Copyright © 2000-2024 FFZ srl - www.freeforumzone.com